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Why Do Friends Matter?

Article  in  Human Development · October 2005

DOI: 10.1159/000086878

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Brett Laursen Karen S. Mooney

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 Essay Review

Human Development 300

DOI: 10.1159/0000XXXXX

Why Do Friends Matter?

Essay Review of Children’s Friendships: The Beginnings of
Intimacy by Judy Dunn1

Brett Laursen Karen S. Mooney

Florida Atlantic University, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., USA

Why do Friends matter? This is one of the central questions addressed in Judy
Dunn’s new book, Children’s Friendships: The Beginnings of Intimacy. Professor
Dunn, an eminent scholar of developmental psychology at the Institute of Psychia-
try, is widely known for careful and elegant longitudinal studies conducted in En-
gland and in Pennsylvania (USA) that detail the development of family and friend
relationships during the early and middle childhood years. As was the case in previ-
ous volumes on related topics (e.g., Young Children’s Close Relationships: Beyond
Attachment; Separate Lives: Why Siblings Are So Different), these longitudinal
studies provide rich fodder for Dunn’s theses about the developmental significance
of close relationships. In the present volume, she argues that friendships during
early childhood provide experiences that are crucial for normative cognitive, emo-
tional, and social development.
The evidence may be familiar, but it bears repeating nonetheless. First, friends
are an important source of social support. Because many young children spend con-
siderable time away from home in child care settings, peers occupy a central place in
the social world of early childhood. Dunn marshals evidence to support the conten-
tion that friends may provide a buffer against behavior problems, victimization,
school adjustment difficulties, and disturbances linked to the birth of a sibling. Sec-
ond, friendship provides a ‘crucible’ for exploring the emotional world. Pretend play
provides young children with the opportunity to ‘share what is worrying as well as
exciting’ (p. 28). Dunn’s findings indicate that by middle childhood, inner states are
discussed more often with friends than with family members. Third, friendship is an
important context for moral development. Because a friendship ‘is often the first
relationship in which children begin to care about and try to understand someone
else, and to respond to the feelings, needs, and troubles of others’ (p. 5), it is an im-
portant context in which children learn to consider perspectives other than their own.
Dunn cites evidence that concern about the needs of a friend coincides with the on-
set of sophisticated conflict resolution strategies. The list goes on. The influence of

1
Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.

Ó2005 S. Karger AG, Basel Brett Laursen

0018–716X/05/0000–0000$22.00/0 Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University
Fax + 41 61 306 12 34 2912 College Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33314 (USA)
E-Mail karger@karger.ch Accessible online at: Tel. +1 954 236 1121, Fax +1 954 236 1242
www.karger.com www.karger.com/hde E-Mail laursen@fau.edu
friends extends well beyond the role of playmate and companion. Of course, claims
about the significance of friendship are not new to this text; what is novel is the
compelling and cogent compendium of evidence to support these claims.
The volume appears to be aimed at a broad audience. If books on friendship
were ordered on a scale ranging from academic press books intended for scientists
and professionals [e.g., Bukowski, Newcomb, & Hartup, 1996] to popular press
books aimed at parents and the mass media [e.g., Rubin, 2002], the present volume
tilts toward the latter. The book is neither long (209 pages) nor burdened with tech-
nical terminology, methodological details, and statistics. Lucid and well written,
human development, education, and psychology faculties could assign the volume
as a supplemental text, particularly if they share our hope of educating young adults
to be competent parents and informed consumers of parenting research. Although
students and educators will profit from reading the book, they are not necessarily
the primary target audience. With an appendix entitled, ‘How can parents help chil-
dren overcome friendship difficulties?’, it is clear that the book is aimed beyond the
academic market.
This is not the first book devoted to the developmental significance of friend-
ship, which led us to wonder about the motives of those interested in this field of
study. Does anyone seriously dispute the notion that friendships matter? Can legiti-
mate arguments be made to the contrary? In the remainder of our essay we will
consider the obverse proposition, namely that friendships make little or no contri-
bution to developmental outcomes. To help with the task, we informally polled
several leading scholars of childhood friendship. Their names are withheld to avoid
the impression that any advocate the views they offered in response to our inquiry.
We discuss four of these contrary views.
It could be argued that friendships are too fleeting to have any long-term influ-
ence. The friendships of children, especially those during the toddler and early
childhood period that are the focus of Dunn’s book, are quite ephemeral compared
to the relatively stable relationships that characterize later age periods. In early
childhood, if ‘you get tired of playing her games, the ones she likes, you tell her not
to be your friend anymore’ [Selman, 1980, p. 138]. Later, around early adoles-
cence, ‘there comes a time when the relationship is really a commitment between
the two of you’ [Selman, 1980, p. 141]. Dunn confronts arguments about the transi-
tory nature of early friendships with a convincing battery of correlational studies
indicating that children with friends have better social skills, fewer behavior prob-
lems, and higher self-concepts than children without friends. Short-term longitudi-
nal studies are described that extend these differences over the course of a year or
two into the realm of academic and social competence. Still, evidence for the long-
term significance of early friendship remains elusive. A longitudinal study of pre-
adolescents with and without reciprocal friends failed to identify differences in
subsequent young adult life satisfaction, academic achievement, and social adjust-
ment [Bagwell, Newcomb, & Bukowski, 1998]. The fact that friendship participa-
tion at a single time point does not predict long-term adjustment may speak more to
the fleeting nature of these relationships than to the long-term significance of
friendship; at any given time, a significant proportion of well-adjusted children are
likely to be between friendships. Dunn and others argue that because friendships
are transitory, the cumulative experience of friendship may be more important to
development than any particular relationship, but empirical evidence on this point

2 Human Development 300 Laursen/Mooney

is lacking. Needed are studies that examine the contributions that friendship change
and stability make to individual adjustment.
It could be argued that friendship is not universally relevant. There are signifi-
cant variations in patterns of friendship across age groups and settings, suggesting
that early friendships are not necessary for optimal development. Sullivan [1953]
argued that friends do not emerge as an important context for development until the
middle childhood years and that their significance peaks during the preadolescent
and early adolescent years with the emergence of chumships. Others suggest that
different provisions of friendship wax and wane but that most are not especially
relevant during the first years of life [Laursen & Bukowski, 1997]. Still others
claim that friendship functions change with age but the developmental significance
of friendship does not [Hartup & Stevens, 1997]. In her focus on the earliest stages
of peer interaction, Dunn maintains that even friendships among the very young are
of singular importance. Echoing Piaget [1932/1965], she argues that peer relation-
ships are the primary context for the development of social skills, imaginary play,
and perspective taking. She is careful to note, however, that early peer contribu-
tions to development may be a product of a unique child care culture that situates
young children in the company of agemates for extended periods of time. The exis-
tence of well-adjusted adults with little or no early experience in nonfamilial peer
relationships suggests that friendships are probably most important to young chil-
dren in peer-rich environments.
It could be argued that friendship experiences are confounded with other social
experiences. Few scholars admit this publicly, but it is difficult to attribute unique
variance to friendship, over and above variance attributed to family relationships
and peer group experiences. Dunn reviews evidence indicating that children with
warm, competent parents are more apt to be accepted by peers and to have a close
friendship. This is in line with recent evidence indicating that most youth report
considerable concordance across family, peer, and friend relationships [Laursen &
Mooney, in press]. For this reason, Dunn is careful to caution against drawing
causal conclusions about the long-term significance of friendship. Leaving aside
the extraordinary circumstances that characterize orphanages and concentration
camps, there is little indication that friendships exert positive influences that are
independent of other relationships. It is difficult in a practical sense to separate
acceptance and rejection by a group of peers from having or not having a friend,
but efforts to do so suggest that the latter is primarily responsible for few outcomes
except loneliness [Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, in press]. Because causal links to
long-term outcomes are notably absent, we must acknowledge the possibility that
the unique significance of friendship has been overstated.
Finally, it could be argued that certain friendships are a developmental liabil-
ity. Dunn draws upon a wealth of longitudinal data to demonstrate that parent and
sibling relationships differ in significant ways from friend relationships and con-
cludes that the latter must therefore play a special role in development. She is quick
to acknowledge the obvious problem with these analyses, namely that observed
differences in typical relationship characteristics should not be equated with neces-
sary differences in relationship functions. She is no doubt aware that efforts to tie
friendship participation to individual outcomes may be misguided because they
overlook the contributions of friendship quality. Peer rejection is probably a better
predictor of most individual outcomes than failure to make or keep a friend, and

Why Friends Matter Human Development 300 3

 friendship quality has emerged as a stronger predictor of individual adaptation than
participation in a friendship. Compelling longitudinal evidence suggests that chil-
dren with high quality friendships fare better than those with poor quality friend-
ships and those with no friendships [Dishion, Andrews, & Crosby, 1995; Ladd,
Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1996]. It remains to be seen whether the advantages
Dunn ascribes to participation in a friendship during early childhood are equally
realized by those who participate in low and high quality relationships.
Reviewing the literature, Hartup [1996] concluded that (a) friends may not be
a developmental necessity but (b) good friends are certainly a developmental ad-
vantage. It is not clear whether Dunn believes friendship to be a prerequisite for
optimal development, but she is committed to the proposition that good friendships
make an important difference in the lives of young children. Many examples from
her observations and interviews indicate that this is not just an academic discus-
sion: Children are firmly convinced of the advantages proffered by a close friend.
Scholars tend to cast these formulations in terms of formal principals. Young chil-
dren are less prone to abstraction. When asked whether friendships are important,
my five-year-old son Erik firmly stated that friends were very important because
‘otherwise you wouldn’t have anyone to entertain you.’ This simple depiction of
the significance of friendship may be the most revealing: It is important to be
happy and friends are central to the happiness of most children.

Acknowledgment

B.L. received support for the preparation of this essay from the US National Institute of
Mental Health (MH58116). We are grateful to Bill Bukowski, Wyndol Furman, Bill Hartup,
and Ken Rubin for their comments and suggestions.

References

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Dishion, T.J., Andrews, D.W., & Crosby, L. (1995). Antisocial boys and their friends in early adoles-
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4 Human Development 300 Laursen/Mooney

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