ABSTRACT
Processes related to cross-sex friendship formation and maintenance begun in early and middle childhood continue into adolescence. As was true of the transition from early childhood to middle childhood, specific cross-sex friendships from middle and late childhood might be carried over into adolescence. Rawlins contended in the above quotation that cross-sex friendships and cross-sex friendship processes are complicated and sometimes compromised by the onset of puberty, sexual identity development, and the complexity of the adolescent social network. Those complicating factors are explored in one or more of the four sections of this chapter. The first three sections develop the central themes of the book and relate each theme to adolescence. In the final section I offer some concluding comments about cross-sex friendships that occur in this strikingly dramatic stage of life. Before moving on to the first section, a few observations are in order concerning the significance and meaning of adolescence, its developmental relevancy to cross-sex friendship formation, the time frame it entails, and some weaknesses I encountered in the adolescent cross-sex friendship literature.
