Boys and girls relationships. Friendships, enmities and groups from a gender perspective

In this work we analyzed the relationships and interaction groups of 774 children in 1st grade elementary school, an age rarely present in social network studies, with a focus in gender differences. Maccoby (1998) referred to boys and girls as “two separate worlds”. Children social networks studies of the last decades show diverse evidence that the relational structure differs substantially with gender. Boys and girls interact with each other infrequently as friends or members of the same group. Thus, the most frequent friendships dyads are same-sex, and the same applies for playgroups. On the other hand, girls usually interact in smaller groups and children in larger ones (Rose and Rudolph, 2006). The results presented in this communication confirm these differences in the affiliations of boys and girls from a young age, highlighting the importance of continuing to explore the characteristics of affiliations between girls, between boys and, although less prevalent, mixed affiliations. And what happens in negative relationships? The analysis of the enmity dyads shows that the dyads of mutual aversion display a different pattern, being the mixed enmities between boys and girls more frequent than the friendship. Other studies find more negative interactions between boys and girls and negative perceptual biases towards other-sex playmates (Rodkin et al., 2003; Underwood, Schockner and Hurley, 2001). These results suggest that the low prevalence of friendships and mixed groups does not necessarily imply an absence of a look towards the other world as Maccoby said, but rather less satisfactory interactions. We conclude that enmity can be a good setting for understanding cross-gender relations in childhood, and complementing the analysis of positive relationships and interactions between boys and girls