Structural predictors of problematic friendship in later life

The purpose of this study was to examine the constraining and facilitating effects of social structural position (age, sex, race, class, financial suf ficiency, and number of friends) on opportunities for friendship. We hypoth esized that the greater the number of people who share a given social struc tural location and the more access they have to situations where it is poss ible to meet new people, the less likely they are to have problematic frien dships. The sample comprised 53 male and female community residents aged 55 to 84 years who enjoyed fairly good health. Logistic and multiple regressi on procedures revealed outcomes opposite to our predictions: those who were supposedly more social structurally advantaged actually reported greater n umbers of problematic friendships. potential interpretations include the po ssibility that these people are more critical than others of their friend r elationships or more willing to acknowledge problems, that the norms regard ing commitment to friends are weaker among these individuals, or that they learn to acquire friends but not to avoid and solve problems in their relat ionships. Apparently. people with more friends are not mart: likely than ot hers to terminate problematic friendships or to redefine them as mere assoc iations.