ABSTRACT
Like most periods of the life course, friendships during later life involve both continuities and discontinuities with earlier patterns for individuals and social cohorts. Diverse friendship practices and experiences are apparent for several reasons. First, this developmental period potentially spans 40 or more years of human activity, with individuals exhibiting various opportunities, personal styles, decisions, and initiatives in conducting their social lives. Meanwhile, areas of diminishing or minimal individual control, such as persons’ financial resources, social capabilities, health, and mobility, as well as their friends’ proximity, abilities to interact, or mortality become salient at varying junctures. To a considerable degree, continuities in friendship practices reflect stability in the participants’ capacities for interpersonal contact and enabling circumstances, whereas discontinuities arise from changes in these conditions, which frequently transcend individual choice (Rawlins, 1992; Roberto, 1997).
