Friendship and Family

Romance gets the headlines, but friendship and family supply most of the relating in a life. This topic covers the research on those bonds: the surprising weight of weak ties, the friendships that form across group lines, the negotiations between parents and adult children, and the family relationships people choose as well as the ones they are born into.

The archive is rich here, including work on organised activities and cross-group friendship, and on family conflict across cultures. These studies tend to travel well, because everyone has a version of the problem they describe.

Questions this topic explores

• Why do weak ties matter more than we think?
• How do friendships form across group differences?
• What does research say about parent and adult child conflict?
• Can organised activities really build cross-group friendship?