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Best Friends for Now: Friendship Network Stability and Adolescents’ Life Course Goals

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Social Networks and the Life Course

Part of the book series: Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research ((FSSR,volume 2))

Abstract

Finishing school and starting a family are among the most important life goals for young adults, with long term consequences for the life course. The cultural transmission of these goals is so widespread as to be nearly universal. Yet some adolescents fail to embrace them. This chapter advances the argument that the stability of friendship networks is positively related to the adoption of these life goals. The authors test this hypothesis using a large longitudinal social network study of middle and high school students. The chapter reports results indicating that youth who sustain friendships over time are relatively uncommon, and that friendship network stability is robustly and positively associated with educational and familial aspirations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In subsequent models we detected four influential outliers, all of which had above average levels of friendship consistency (average = 0.45), but extremely low investment in future goals (average = 0.25). In models 2–4, friendship consistency was not statistically significant when these cases were included, but had a significant positive effect in model 1 regardless of their inclusion.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    Robert Faris

  2. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Diane H. Felmlee

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  1. Robert Faris
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  2. Diane H. Felmlee
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Correspondence to Robert Faris .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Duane F. Alwin

  2. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Diane H. Felmlee

  3. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Derek A. Kreager

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Faris, R., Felmlee, D.H. (2018). Best Friends for Now: Friendship Network Stability and Adolescents’ Life Course Goals. In: Alwin, D., Felmlee, D., Kreager, D. (eds) Social Networks and the Life Course. Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71544-5_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71544-5_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71543-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71544-5

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