Best Friends and Marriage

Exchange Among Women

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11097293
AutoresThomas S Smith (autor de correspondencia), Stacey J Oliker
Año1991
Volumen20
Número1
Páginas127
Fecha de publicación1991-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaContemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0094-3061 • E-ISSN: 1939-8638
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2307/2072137
OpenAlexW2015499017
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas31

In this fascinating book, Stacey Oliker delves into the intimate realm of women's friendships and explores the complex relation between friendship and family life. Based on a series of interviews with women from the middle and working classes, this work reveals the distinctive values of best friendship and marriage, how husbands and their wives' friends feel about each other, and how women friends talk about marriage problems. Best Friends and Marriage suggests that close friendships provide women with unique sources of intimacy, affection, identity, and community. Contradicting a widespread view of families as isolated and self-contained private worlds, Oliker suggests that 'companionate marriage' did not replace the friendship and intimacy that pervaded communities of past times, but rather, that intimate friendship and companionate marriage evolved intertwined. Examining the cultures and dynamics of friendship, Oliker shows how women's position in society constrains the choices they make at home and in friendship, and shapes how best friends perceive each other's best interests. Best Friends and Marriage breaks ground in linking together the institutions of family and friendship, and in explaining intimacy in sociological and historical as well as psychological terms. In this way, a richly descriptive book also extends theory in the areas of family, community, and gender inequality

Demographic economics · Economics · Political science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Psychology