12. We Get By with a Little Help from Our Friends

Abstract

Friends are an important part of social circles tm late infancy through late adulthood. tey help us get along in life by modeling social engagement, offering emotional support, providing camaraderie, challenging unexamined assumptions, listening to deep concerns, just being there, and a host of other mundane and special contributions to our well-being (Rawlins, 2016). Life span development and life-course perspectives posit that earlier life experiences influence later life outcomes (Dannefer and Settersten, 2010), so understanding friendship in old age requires examining it at multiple earlier periods. What were friend relationships like for the youth and emerging adults comprising the baby boomer cohort during the Summer of Love? How did those friendship patterns play out across their young adult and middle-age years, and what are they like now for aging baby boomers?Historical context and cohort experiences matter (Dannefer and Settersten, 2010), so we sought to answer these questions by looking for research findings from studies of baby boomers in the United States, conducted when they were young (approximately age 20), in middle-age (around age 45), and in old age (ages 65 and older). Participants in the Summer of Love were teenagers and young adults at the leading edge of the baby boomer cohort, so, allowing a few years for research to be conducted and published, we searched for research related to their friendships published in (or using data collected in) the 1970s and early 1980s, in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, and after 2011, to capture the three adult stages of the cohort that began in 1946. Note that friendship only emerged as a significant topic of research in the 1980s, despite the fact that friendship has been discussed since the time of Aristotle (Rawlins, 2016).Also, friendship in childhood and late adulthood has been studied far more than friendship in young and middle adulthood. Thus, available evidence from the relevant historical periods is not as robust as we would have liked. Nevertheless, we present a representative sampling of the kinds of information about friends available at each period of the baby boomers' adulthood. Of course, cohorts are not homogeneous, so our interpretations are tempered by acknowledgement of a great variety of opportunities and constraints, personalities, political stances, and many other features that shape diversity within a cohort's set of experiences and outcomes over the years.Friendships of Baby Boomer Youth and Young AdultsResearch published in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the baby boomers were teenagers and young adults, was much more likely to focus on parent-child relations, school performance, and problems such as juvenile delinquency than on friendship. Thus, we found few studies of baby boomers' friendships when they were teens and young adults and we were unable to identify any studies focused on friendships of Summer of Love participants per se.Research shows that friends of early adult baby boomers were similar in demographic characteristics and attitudes (Kandel, 1978). Not only did they have personal backgrounds in common, but also, same-sex friendships prevailed. Friends enjoyed mutual interactions that contributed to their co-constructing of insights into and understandings about themselves and their social relationships (Hunter, 1984).The most important characteristics of friendship (in order of endorsement by college students) were dependability (55 percent), honesty (47 percent), understanding (45 percent), and trust (43 percent), followed by enjoyment (37 percent), being a confidant (37 percent), and a host of other aspects mentioned by smaller proportions of young adults (Tesch and Martin, 1983). College men and women at that time did not differ in number of friends, time spent with friends, or the perceived value of intimacy. However, women emphasized the importance of emotional sharing and selfdisclosure among friends, whereas men emphasized mutual interests and activities (Caldwell and Peplau, 1982). …