ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by continuing to develop a central concept for friendship: moral imagination. Parental support is important for young children as they begin to build social relations with peers, and this support involves identifying friends and establishing and extending invitations for playdates. In this chapter, two narratives are used to examine the learning processes involved in playdates. In the first narrative, the mother’s attention is devoted to the child’s social future, where the ‘establish’ phase of a playdate is elaborated. In the second narrative, the mother allows the children freedom to be together during a playdate in the home setting. The two children, Mia and Nancy, learn to accept and build their relationship by entering into an imaginative play situation and being empathetic towards each other. We argue that moral imagining in friendship involves establishing, accepting and building relationships, thereby forming a process directed towards possible social futures. Consequently, when parents support playdates, the conditions are created for children to form pathways towards friendships.
