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“You’re my friend today, but not tomorrow”: Learning to be friends among young U.S. middle‐class children
Author(s) -
AHN JUNEHUI
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2011.01307.x
Subject(s) - friendship , socialization , dynamism , middle class , cultural reproduction , sociology , social psychology , class (philosophy) , psychology , developmental psychology , gender studies , epistemology , political science , law , philosophy
In this article, I analyze children's and adults’ discourses on friendship to examine how U.S. middle‐class children learn culturally appropriate concepts of friendship. Belying the assumption shared by both caregivers and early research on friendship development that children passively internalize adult‐desired concepts of friendship, children creatively reinterpret and reconstruct available cultural resources concerning friendship to build their own culture‐laden social world. Moreover, children's creative embellishment of the core concepts of friendship leads to changes in adult socialization practices. My findings articulate the contribution children and their culture make to cultural reproduction and highlight the inherent dynamism of socialization.