ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on female patterns of sociability during the pre-affluent decades. Liz Spencer and Ray Pahl commented that amongst those they interviewed in the early twenty-first century, many had the kinds of close bonds of support and mutual obligation with friends that are often associated with families. They described these as 'chosen-as-given' relationships, what began as 'chosen' friendships became invested with the characteristics of 'given', family relationships. The purported shift towards chosen, friend-like relationships in the age of affluence dovetails with the narrative of the demise of 'traditional working-class community': chosen friendships replaced given relationships with kin, neighbours and workmates. Although empirical research into working-class friendship is sparse, there is some support for the suggestion that sociability with chosen friends may have been more important at the beginning of the twenty-first century than it had been in the first half of the twentieth.
