ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the growth of relationships from birth through early and middle childhood to pre-adolescence. This roughly ten-year period spans a remarkable amount of developmental change. Relationships and their social-psychological underpinnings are transformed as infants progress from entry into the social world of the family through a wealth offormative interactions with their parents, siblings, and other members of their immediate social groups. Gradually, new kinds of close relationships are forged with friends and peers, as children move beyond the confines of the family into friendship networks and age-segregated groupings in preschool, at school and in the neighbourhood.
