I’ve been uncomfortable with the term “best friend” since as long as I can remember. Is it because I never felt like I had one as a child? Was I afraid if I stated this out loud it wouldn’t be reciprocated? Or because the experience of watching others describe best friendship felt like something exclusive? If I did have a best friend, in my memory it was fairly momentary: the second grade, a week at sleep-away soccer camp, that summer between 7th and 8th grade for a few weeks when we’d go rollerblading together all day and then get ice cream at the counter at Uncle Ralph’s. When these intense friendship spurts ended, it was as disappointing and hurtful as it had been ecstatic to be part of; an unromantic breakup I had to weather alone, but also, arguably, made me good at navigating the ups and downs of friendships over time.
I’m curious about the liberal use of this label—both by kids to each other and adults upon child relationships. Are (—mostly mothers) projecting a sense of belonging and bonding they want their kids to have? Do they imagine a relationship of such depth it’s unbreakable across schools and grades? Do they read the adoration as mutual and prolonged? Is this just casual terminology in 2024 that I’m reading way too much into?
In an article in Psychology Today, a 2015 study on best friends reports that the rates of children maintaining a best friendship are drastically low:
Amy Hartl and colleagues (2015) identified 573 mutual best friendships that began when students were in seventh grade. Survival analyses showed that only about a quarter of these friendships lasted until eighth grade, and less than 1 in 10 made it to ninth grade. Only 1 percent of the mutual best friendships that started in seventh grade were maintained in 12th grade.
I suspect most parents know that their child’s kindergarten best friend is unlikely to be their best friend in fifth grade, or eighth grade, or college, let alone adulthood. That seems fine, expected, and highly rational; kids move schools and go through puberty and their tastes morph away from those they were once very close to. Physical proximity, pure logistics, and whether you’re friends with the other parents are also an inevitable factor.
At age 8, Ada claims she has somewhere between seven and 10 besties or BFFs on any given day. What this means to her, I do not entirely know. Is a “bestie or BFF” whose hand you write hearts on in pen during recess actually the same thing as a friend you have real intimacy with? Does she register the linguistic contradiction, because if any friend is in fact, the best, there cannot actually be ten of them?
Google tells me that Ada is smack in the middle of the “best friend” years, so the abundance is perhaps, also, developmental.
I suspect that for her, there’s no real differentiation between a bestie and a good friend and using the term broadly is also a socially protective stance. But, as a kid who grew up on the outside of any kind of close mutual friend-groupness, I am both interested—and sometimes admittedly uncomfortable—with the way parents take ownership of said relationships. There are inevitable edges to the parent communication or knowledge that aren’t in sync with the kids’ actual relationships. Where do new friends fit in, and where do non-mutual friends fit in? What happens when there’s a falling out or a riff, as there inevitably will be, and what we’ve signaled to our kid is an expectation of maintaining said best friendship?
Perhaps I spent too much time this week re-reading the great 2014 piece in The Atlantic by Hanna Rosin, titled, “The Overprotected Kid.” While this piece focuses primarily on physical safety, and the ways specific incidents (kidnapping, playground injury) led to broad strokes epidemic-level interpretations of risks that shifted our mentality towards safety starting in the 70s and 80s, it also delves into the broad idea of overprotectiveness-under-the-guise-of-safety being the dominant ideology of our generation of parents. We’ve shifted towards trying to insulate our children from both physical (guns, for example), and more abstract threats (climate change), as well as from any moments of potential emotional hurt. Cushioning our kids from feeling shame, not feeling attended to, or anything, to use Dr. Becky’s language, that would diminish our “connection” with our kids, and relinquish the Total Emotional Control we are meant to parent with, we ought to move away from.
I can’t help but feel like this emotional hovering and insularity is an extension of also physically hovering more, watching more, and scheduling more. It’s all inserting parents more and more into a child’s daily activity and becoming more and more essential—and not exactly in a good way—in relation to the child. Does it not also follow that they’re more invested in, and heavily facilitating their child’s friendships and sense of belonging? And—go with me here—is it another way we try to (over)protect and enshroud our kids from the potential hurt, risks, emotional hardship of childhood, to make sure they’re always surrounded by companionship and inclusion?
Ada got a “best friends” necklace for her 8th birthday and cherishes it amongst her collection of mixed-quality jewelry. Whether she and her friend are actually “best friends,” whatever that means at age 8, seems kind of besides the point. She likes that the two halves go together. She wears it whenever she goes to play with this friend and makes a point to show that she’s remembered to wear The Necklace. They smoosh the two halves together when they first reunite, and then run upstairs to play. I hear a lot of giggling. It sounds extremely silly. There’s a crash, and someone is jumping off a bed. I have no idea what they’re really doing up there, or if they’ll still play together in a few years, or a few years after that. For now, I’m glad my child has a friend who really makes her laugh, and resist interpreting that there’s all that much more to it than that.
I’m genuinely curious if 1) your kid has a best friend? 2) if you care if your child has a best friend? 3) how you (and your child) use this terminology — esp directly in conversation with your child or in the presence of other kids and parents?
Recommendations:
To eat: Apollo Bagels in the East Village, which just opened to 7 days a week, are legitimately the best bagels I’ve ever eaten in my life. This is a statement, not a debate. (jk, tell me about all the other great bagels)
To read: The Meltdown at a Middle School in a Liberal Town by Jessica Winter in the New Yorker — a full on fascinating clusterf*ck set in Amherst, MA.
To read: So You Think You’ve Been Gaslit, the much-shared article by Leslie Jamison, which goes into the how the awareness of gaslighting has expanded, and also as a result, the use of the terminology becomes far more imprecise. This actually started me down the train of thinking about “best friend” terminology and the broad usages.
To read: Re-linking to The Overprotected Kid by Hanna Rosin again, which I referenced above, and is just…so good. Written in 2014 but every word still rings so true today.
To wear (for yoga, exercise): This Vuori Energy Top. It’s like wearing…a cloud. Not too long, not too cropped. There are probably less expensive versions of the perfect exercise tank but I honestly haven’t found another one.
To read: I think most people have already read Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers (which was a NYT Bestseller back in 2018), but drinking it up and have already procured her more recent novel, I Have Some Questions For You to read next.
To watch: CDK dance company’s video to Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye that’s been going viral on TikTok. The group scene choreography is insannnne.
To watch (in theaters): Problemista, Julio Torres’ debut feature starring Tilda Swinton, and himself, as an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador who is trying to secure a visa in time to stay and is working as an assistant to a wildly kooky Swinton. Not a perfect movie, but many great scenes.
Also, I’m flying to LA next week and could use a re-up on good podcast episodes to download. Pls lmk!
One aspect that isn't talked about much here is the social/media pressure to have a best friend. I have a friend who is an only child and so disappointed that she doesn't seem to have a BFF like the ones she's sees on TV. I'm not sure why we have that expectation for ourselves or our children. Like it is akin to being single if you don't have a best friend, or someone doesn't think you're their best friend.
On a broader level, I feel like this is a way to rank friends, and I also don't understand our obsession with ranking. I have great friends. But which one is the best?! One must be the best! I've tried to de-emphasize favourites with my kids. You don't have to have a favourite colour (why are my kids asked this so much?) or one favourite food. Every time you're presented with multiple options, it doesn't have to be a quest to figure out which one is the best, or which one is your favourite. We can like different things at different times for different reasons and don't have to constantly rank them!
As always, you've written eloquently about a topic that feels hard to fully express in a concise way. I 100% agree. I live in a mixed middle/upper class area and I have a 10-year-old, 9-year-old and a 4-year-old. I work from home and have always found the pressures of setting up playdates to be another thing to add to my list. I haven't shunned them completely; I've done my best. But when I look at the tight-knit kid groups at school, it's obvious that they're fully orchestrated by the parents. So much so that I think it'd be impossible for my kids to be a part of them without me first breaching the group by developing some sort of new, close friendship. I'm hoping this evolves over the next few years. That agency for kids to build and maintain their own relationships is something I am so looking forward to as they get older!
Also, I devoured The Great Believers. Have you read The Heart's Invisible Furies? Highly recommend!!