Friendship and Need Fulfillment During Three Phases of Young Adulthood

Abstract

Theory and knowledge about adult friendship have not been integrated within a broader life-span perspective, thus leaving us with a disjointed understanding of adult friendship, marriage and parent-child relationships. The present study redresses this situation by examining developmental differences in young adult friendship within the broader context of their network of significant family relationships. Robert Weiss' (1974) conceptualization of social provisions was used as the basis for comparing the roles that close friends play in need fulfillment to the roles played by other network members. Predominantly White middle-class male and female adults (ages 20 to 35 years) were recruited from three family-role-defined phases of young adulthood (N = 180): (i) the single phase (i.e. romantically uncommitted), (ii) the married-without-children phase, and (iii) the parenthood phase (i.e. married with young children). Participants rated the extent to which they received each of nine social provisions through their relationships with their mother, father, closest friend, spouse or casual dating partner, and their oldest child (if applicable). In general, the findings revealed that reliance on friends to satisfy social needs is greatest during the single phase and is reduced significantly during the marital and parenthood phases. Women report gaining higher levels of certain social provisions (especially emotional support) from friends than men across all three phases. The importance of friends relative to other network members as suppliers of social provisions differed substantially between the three phases; these differences appeared to be integrally tied to differences in family role involvement. Neither Weiss' relationships-specificity model nor Cantor's (1979) hierarchical-compensatory model adequately described the organization of need-fulfilling networks across all three phases.