The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

290 Chapter 8

among the elderly against dating. Thus cross-

sex friendships are most likely to occur among

the elderly in the context of an organized so-

cial event involving a lot of other people. El-

derly women, in particular, avoid cross-sex

friendships. The following example illustrates

just how foreign the concept of cross-sex

friendship is to an elderly woman. After she

was widowed, my mother-in-law lived in an

apartment building that housed mostly senior

citizens. I often saw a single elderly man sit-

ting by himself at a picnic table outside the

building. Even though my mother-in-law

was an extremely friendly and sociable per-

son, she did not feel comfortable talking to a

man unless she was in the company of other

women. If the person at the picnic table were

a woman, I have no doubt my mother-in-law

would have been sitting right beside her in a

minute. It’s especially unfortunate for men

that the norms against cross-sex interaction

are so strong because older men tend to have

lost more of their same-sex friends.

The question is whether the norm pro-

hibiting cross-sex friendship is an age effect

With advancing age, friendships may in-

crease for women and decrease for men due to

differences in the opportunities for friendship.

As women get older, they experience the depar-

ture of their children from home, which leads

to a decrease in household responsibilities.

Thus older women are left with more time for

friends. For men, increased age brings retire-

ment, which may be associated with a loss of

friends if many of their connections are made

through work. With retirement, the number of

friends often decreases for men, and men’s de-

pendence on wives for support and social con-

tacts increases. In addition, women are more

likely than men to maintain friendships from

their youth in old age (Rawlins, 2004).

A major source of friendship for the el-

derly, especially women, is the senior center.

Elderly women who live alone are more likely

than married women to use senior centers, and

participation in senior centers is related to bet-

ter mental health and good health behavior for

these women (Aday, Kehoe, & Farney, 2006).

Marital status has a great impact

on friendship among the elderly (Akiyama,

Elliott, & Antonucci, 1996), especially elderly

men. Married men have more people in their

social network compared to unmarried men.

For men, women are often their link to social

relationships. Marital status has no effect on

the number of friends that women have be-

cause women maintain a network of friends

outside their marital relationship. Among

the elderly, both women and men have more

women friends than men friends (Akiyama

et al., 1996). Because men die younger than

women, elderly women are more available as

friends (see Figure 8.10).

The elderly are the least likely to have

friends of the other sex. Elderly people are

more likely than younger people to associate

cross-sex friendship with romantic interest

(Rawlins, 2004), and there is a strong norm

FIGURE 8.10 Partly because women outlive

men, and partly because women maintain friend-

ships from youth more than men, friendships

among elderly women are strong.

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