CONNECTING

A superficial look at the changing nature of friendships among girls and women at various stages of life.

Journalist Sheehy (Town & Country, Women, Money, etc.) interviewed psychologists, sociologists, and some 200 women across the US (most of them middle-class, college-educated, and white) to construct the picture of female friendship that she presents here. After briefly examining how women’s friendships have changed since the advent of modern feminism (and how they differ generally from men’s), she takes a closer look at how women form friendships and finds seven identifiable stages to the process: attraction, initiation, structuring, comfort, strengthening, testing, and commitment. She also finds that friends can be grouped into ten basic categories, some examples of which are soulmates, lifemates, companions in crisis, complementary opposites, and mentors and protégées. Each grouping is described with extensive quotes from her interviewees. The same technique of using the voices of individual women to illustrate her conclusions is followed in subsequent chapters, which consider friendships of girls, teenagers, college-age women, women in their 20s and 30s, women from 40 to 64, and finally women over 65. Not surprisingly, she finds that diverging life patterns—marriage, parenthood, divorce, job and financial status—test the friendship bond, and that the support of other women can be tremendously helpful to women facing widowhood. Having established that friendships are important to women, and that not all women are adept at forming them, Sheehy offers a final list—17 steps for having friends for life. Her advice here takes the form of such reminders as: stay in touch, learn how to listen and when to remain silent, and give gifts from the heart. To authenticate her findings, the author has included a copy of the interview questions and a tally of the results to specific questions.

Shallow treatment of a serious subject, with lots of padding to fool the eye.