The Formation of Friendships During the First Five Years

As nearly as can be told from the available evidence, children are naturally neither friendly nor unfriendly. Friendliness is the outcome of environmental forces, as is also unfriendliness. The meaning of anything to a child is the result of his experiences with it, determined by what it does to or for him, and by what he can do to it. In this respect, people are merely objects in the child's environment. What they mean to him follows directly from his experiences with them. Under one kind of environment he will become friendly, under another, unfriendly. The majority of children spend their early years in homes in which people care for their needs. They are fed, clothed, and comforted, their pain is relieved, and many other things that make for their well-being, happiness, and contentment are performed. Accordingly, we would expect the majority of young children to be friendly rather than unfriendly. A study of two-year-olds shows this to be the case. They were brought it into a small playroom two at a time, each child being paired with each other child of the group, and their responses were recorded. The results showed that friendliness was far more common than unfriendliness -- in terms of score, 89.5 and 20.5, respectively. If children's early experiences with people were marked by abuse, pain, and the like, unfriendliness undoubtedly would be developed instead.

Obviously, the factors which further the formation of friendships in childhood are those which satisfy, please, comfort, or help the child in some way. Factors which hinder or prevent the formation of friendships are those which irritate, anger, pain, or otherwise displease the child. A very long list of specific conditions tending to develop friendliness could be given, and another list conducive to unfriendliness could be set forth. The close contacts incident to living in the same family may lead to bitter hatred or warm affection. If children interfere with each other in any way continually for a considerable period of time, they are likely to become unfriendly and jealous of each other. With young children proximity is a very common factor in friendship and companionship. The child cannot go far from home. Accordingly, he makes friends with children near at hand. Mere propinquity may not be enough to develop companionship, but if the children are near the same age, they are likely to have enough community of interest to become friends. At all ages, it would seem, community of interest is a very important factor conditioning friendship. Children who like to do the same things are likely to be friends, if they have the opportunity to be together so as to discuss their common likes, provided, of course, that other conditions giving rise to friction are absent.

When pre-school children are allowed to form groups freely, sex plays less of a part than with older children who tend to group themselves according to sex. Children, if left to themselves, form groups largely upon the basis of acceptable behavior and ability to enter into the group activities. When race, color, poverty, or riches are factors in the formation of groups of pre-school children, we may be sure that home pressure or the influence of other adults is likely to be responsible for the social discrimination displayed. Such factors otherwise have little meaning or value for the child of four or five years.

A youngster of three or four years of age often forms a strong attachment for some other child and seeks to be with him as much as possible. Such little chums may be seen going home together from nursery school or kindergarten. They are much together at school and out of school, if opportunity can be found. Such friendships may last for several months, although more commonly they last only a few days or weeks. We have observed many of these among kindergarten children four or five years old. Usually two children are chums. Less frequently three may be chums for a while. In one case we observed three boys who became great chums in kindergarten at the age of five. Their friendship continued through the first and second grades, until one of the boys moved to another city. We also have seen a few cases of three girls being chums in kindergarten for a short time. We have seen the close friendship between two boys or two girls lasting for some time in several cases through kindergarten and several years thereafter. We would expect such cases to be found, because some of the children, having the traits which make for friendship, are likely to develop in ways which will continue their being chums. On the whole, however, pre-school children do not maintain such chumships for a long period of time, as nurseryschool and kindergarten teachers often have observed.