Friendship plays an important role in shaping
the development of children. Not only does it meet their need for intimacy as
well as improve their interpersonal skills and sensitivity, it also promotes
their cognitive and social development as well as psychological adjustment (Hartup,
1996). Children actually do have both interpersonal and intimacy needs
(Sullivan, 1953).A lack of interactive experiences with close friends in
childhood often leads to personality disorders or obstacles in social ability.
It is in the backdrop of the foregoing that it becomes necessary to explore the
issue of friendship among children.
Friendship is generally an intimate
relationship between more than one individual characterised by loyalty and
mutual respect (Bukowski&Hoza, 1989). A precise definition is, however,
difficult to attain given that it exhibits different characteristics at
different stages of the development of the child. Thus, it may exhibit
egocentricity and situationality in early childhood while turning to
sociocentric or normative in middle childhood (Bigelow, 1977). Nevertheless,
one can identify four major features defining friendship (Newcomb & Bagwell,
1995): more time in common activities; more two-way communication and intimacy;
easy resolution of conflicts; higher performance between the parties as they
are better able to help each other and will have more constructive criticism
among themselves. What follows will, therefore, be an analysis drawing on the
above four characteristics.
Much of the previous studies on this issue
focus on whether having friends has any impact on the development of children. Those
studies attempted to render a distinction between non-friends and friends
interactions respectively (Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995). A focus on the
question as to whether a child has friends in analysis the role of friendship
is, however, misleading as it fails to make a distinction between cause and effect.
Besides, merely having friends does not explain the quality of those friendships
(Hartup, 1996). There have also been proposals to take both a quantitative and
qualitative dimension to the analysis of this issue (Demir&Urberg, 2004).The
quantitative approach relates to the friends of each other while the latter
focus on both the positive and negative perception of children of qualities of
friendship. Combining these two dimensions into the present analysis will,
therefore, be very critical. This is particularly so in analysing the impact on
different aspects of social development on adolescents, friendship and self,
adaptation, social act, mood adjustment, cooperation as well as social skills.
To begin with, self is a social construct.
Its development underpins social development (Harter, 1990). At a general
level, the concept of self is correlated with both cognitive ability and
logical concept. Thus, it increases with increase in age as children gradually
mature into adolescents (offer et al., 1988).Social factors also affect the
development of adolescent self concept. Children, through interaction with
friends and peers, can get knowledge about the concept. Recognition from their
peers- especially friends- can promote their sense of pride, self- esteem,
self-acceptance, self- experience, as well as the development of self-evaluation.
Children who have a close friendship or acceptance by peer groups tend to
exhibit relatively high self-evaluation (Savin-Williams et al., 1990).In
contrast, lack of intimate friendship or where it is crowed out by the peer
group leads to low self evaluation. A number of studies have shown that the
quality of friendship or peer support is positively correlated with self-esteem
of children (Paterson et al., 1995; Keefe& Berndt, 1996; Way&Pahl,
2001).Berndt & Miller (1993) interviewed 153 children to measure the
relationship between positive and negative friendship quality with self-esteem.
The results show that children who had high positive friendship quality also
got high scores on school capacity, social and overall self-esteem. In
contrast, children who had high scores of negative quality friendship, showed
low scores of social and self-esteem. Paterson et al. (1995) also had similar
conclusion. This latter study, however, pointed that friendship quality had
correlation with social self-esteem, but not found in overall self-esteem.
In addition, the fact that children tend to
change their learning environment makes friendship a key predictor of their
adjustment to school (Ladd, 1999; Ladd &Kochenderfer, 1996). In their first
year at school, children experience significant changes not only in their
environment but also in both their own physical and cognitive development.
Friendship can help children to successfully adapt to their new school as well
as dealing with the pressure of life events (Tomada et al., 2005). It is also
the foundation of security and a buffer due to its ability to help children in
dealing with the psychological challenges as argued by the school of social ecology
(Hamm & Faircloth, 2005).This is in addition to enhancing the student’s
sense of belonging to the school.
Positive and negative friendships have
varying effects on the adaptation of children to school. Close and supportive
friendship would generally make children gradually participate in school activities.On
the other hand, children involved in conflicting friendships gradually become
destructive and troublesome (Berndt& Keefe, 1992). Children’s perception of
relationship quality is very important in promoting positive or negative
development outcomes (Hartup, 1996). There is a significant correlation between
the perception of young children of friendship quality on the one hand and
their adaptation to primary school on the other (Ladd &Kochenderfer, 1996).
In a five dimensional study to measure children’s perception of friendship
quality- confirmation, help, exposure to negative emotion, exclusive and
conflict-the results showed that children’s perception of confirmation and
conflict raised satisfaction and stability of children friendship(Ladd
&Kochenderfer, 1996).Perception by boys of conflict predicts maladaptive in
school. These include withdrawal and avoiding school. For both boys and girls,
a perception that friendship is helpful will lead to positive attitude towards
school. Moreover, exclusive perception had significant negatively correlation
with academic achievement.
Furthermore, friendship also affects the
social behaviour of children and adolescents. Behaviour between friends shows
more similarity than that between non-friends (Haselager&Hartup, 1998). The
similarities include pro and anti social behaviour as well as shyness. Pro-social
children tend to report their friends who also have pro-social behaviour and
this impact on them more positively (Ma, 2003). Although children with
anti-social behaviour children also have friends, their friends tend to show
anti-social behaviour and this impact on them more negatively. Moreover,
researchers have also found that the level of pro-social behaviour in the
friends of a child could affect the child’s development of pro-social
behaviour. Thus, a higher level of pro-social behaviour among friends would
enhance pro-social behaviour just as the contrary would be the case (Wentzel,
2004).It has also been shown that the interaction between friends has the effect
of promoting pro-social behaviour among children (Barry &Wentzel, 2006).The
more frequent exchange between friends are, the more children feel more intimate
relationship with friends. This can strengthen the pro-social behaviour.
On the correlation between friendship and
anti-social behaviour, the amount and content of information exchange affect
the anti-social behaviour of children and adolescents (Dishion, 2004).Boys
having low amounts of information exchange and high level of bad content are
more likely to continue the anti-social behaviour. Besides, the characteristics
of friends also have impact on social behaviour. If both of the parties are
highly antisocial, the stability of friendship will maintain or increase the
level of children’s bad behaviours (Berndt et al., 1999; Brendgen et al., 2000).Furthermore,
studies have also investigated the correlation between friendship and bullying
(Bollmer, Milich&Maras, 2005).Thus, the quality of friendship can change a
bullying relationship thereby weakening it.
In addition, emotion adjustment-except for
effect by innate temperament and parenting attitudes- lead to individual differences,
experience of getting along with peers as well as providing an important factor
for children to learn emotion adjustment(Eisenberg &Fabes, 1992; Walden et
al., 1999). The relationships of a child with others are the most important
sources of individual emotional development. Thus, it can be expected that
children who had more friends would have better capacity for emotion adjustment
(Parker &Gottman, 1989).Moreover, friendship becomes more important to
children as they get older. Children with better capacity for emotion adjustment
do not exhibit a sense of loneliness (Bukowski et al., 1993).This emotional
management and emotional interaction is also the central issue of preschool
friendship(Parker&Gottman,1989).It follows that children who had more
friends will have better emotion adjustment than those who had few. Walden et
al. (1999) studied the relationship between friendship, peer acceptance, emotion
adjustment and social emotional behaviour in 3 to 5 years old children. The results
also showed that the numbers of friends are related to the capacity for emotion
adjustment. Demir and Urberg (2004) measured the dimensions of the quantity
(popularity, the number of mutual friends and friends) and quality of
children’s friendship (perceived positive friendship quality and conflict). The
results showed that positive friendship quality expected of children emotion
adjustment.Furthermore, Children’s perceived friendship quality affects the
regulation of internal problems. The supportive friendship can buffer companion
refused consequences. The children who do not have an intimate relationship or
not satisfied with the friendship will feel lonely (Fordham et al., 1999).
Studies comparing the difference in task
completion between friend’s combination and non-friend’s combination also
reveal interesting results. Children and friends can observe more things, talk
richer and have a more positive emotional exchange. These may help a
combination of friends to better at task completion (Newcomb &Brady, 1982).
A number of experiments have confirmed this view. Hartup (1995) studied
friends’ combination and non-friends combination write stories in the computer.
Although there was no difference between two groups on talking time, the group
of friends showed more common orientation and respect for the decisions of each
other. They spend more time to discuss the content, words, rather than withdraw
from the task. They exhibit higher task performance than non-friends group.Newcomb&
Bagwell (1995) meta-analysis showed that friend combinations are more actively
involved in activities than non-friends. The friend group use more conflict
management strategy of avoidance and consultations rather than control
strategies. The cooperative relationship is more equal since friends know each
other more and they have more efficient communications (Ladd& Emerson,
1984).
Again, the fact that friends are more
sensitive to the needs of each other, have more supporting ideas as well as
being open to challenges to their ideas makes them able to cooperate and talk
about the conflicting perspective on various issues (Hartup, 1996). This also
helps to explain and elaborate ideas (Azmitia&Montomery, 1993).These will
be conducive to the improvement and development of children’s social skills (Vaughn
et al., 2000).
Conflict strategies and goals of friendship
also affect quality of friendship. Rose & Asher (1999) believed that
conflict management is the key to maintaining friendship. The social objectives
of children in conflict are often different. Some children focus on maintaining
friendship while others adopt retaliatory behaviour. The results showed that
the number of friends to children had significant negative correlation with
retaliation and hostile strategies. Only half of the children who take revenge
strategy have friends and the quality of those friendships is low. On the other
hand, children will use some positive strategies to maintain friendship, and
this will also help the children developed social skills.
In conclusion, friendship affects many
aspects of the social development of children. Studies on the issue from the
dimension of “having friends” extend to multiple dimensions, including: friends’
characteristics and friendship quality. The foregoing analysis has summarized
six aspects of the impact of friendship on the social development of children. Friendship can help through the sharing of
emotions and thoughts which can help children in better understanding of them
and to become the kind of person they want. It also improves their self-concept
as well as enhancing self-esteem. Friendship can also affect adaptation to
changes in the environment. A positive friendship can help children easily
integrate into the new environment. Supportive friendship can be a predictor of
the pro-social behaviour of children. In
contrast, negative friendship can increase their destructive and other problems.
There is a correlation between anti-social friends and development of
anti-social behaviour.
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