In America, most researchers concede that boys and girls are brought up in different ways, taught different skills and rewarded for different acts. Women, it is agreed, excel at certain tasks, men at others. There's little argument that some personality traits appear more dominant in one sex than in the other. All of this notwithstanding, gender differences are very much in the media these days. Since the rise of the women's movement, gender role behavior has come under closer scrutiny. How has this affected friendship? How do the sexes differ in their friendship relations?
Most preteen children have a best friend who is usually someone of the same sex and similar age. Both sexes share an essentially positive recollection of these childhood friendships; they do not differ in this respect. However, the type of play engaged in during these early friendships is telling of the difference to come. Boys tend to form play groups that are competitive in nature; girls' groups more frequently revolve around cooperative enterprises. Thus, at an early age, boys become concerned with trying hard and winning while girls, by contrast, play house and school, engaging in roles that require complementary support.
Speaking of their childhood, men recall being highly responsive to and aware of the gender-role opinions of other boys. Girls in preteen years appear to be less susceptible to gender-role pressure. It is not until the dating years that women report being concerned with feminine behavior. Males, for the most part, are responsive to the suggestion that their behavior is unmanly at almost any age.
These early attitudes, reinforced by social conditioning, continue to play an active part in the friendships of both sexes during adolescence. This is a period when the majority of males once again report a close alliance with same-sex friends. Now, however, with heightened intensity, considerable energy is devoted to competing for position and a definite undercurrent of competition permeates the relationship. Although in dissimilar fashion, females share equally fragile relationships at this age. For them, the bond of loyalty extends only to the line of romantic involvement. This is most apt to be the case in late adolescence, when dating and relationships with boys take sharp precedence over sisterhood. Actually, dating dilutes the intensity of same sex friendships for men also. For the majority of us, the moment we begin to date seriously, there's a competition between romance and friendship.