ABSTRACT
Children develop in the context of a network of relationships with adults and other children, both inside and outside the family, that expands and changes as they grow older. In the last two decades, tremendous progress has been made toward understanding how the different types of relationships in this network are themselves related. Hartup’s (1979) map of childhood’s social worlds continues to be elaborated and refined as researchers explore children’s relationships with parents, siblings, and peers, charting the territorial overlaps, boundaries, and bridges between them. The mapping of children’s various types of relationships with each other is very much an ongoing process; for example, we know a great deal about the terrain within sibling, peer, and friend relationships, but the connections between them have been much less clearly delineated.
