The discovery of friends’ value
Years ago, I was one of about a dozen students who spent a spring weekend in East Harlem, becoming acquainted with the largely Puerto Rican neighborhood where we’d be counselors in a summer program for children. The first night I went out to call my brother. Approaching the well-lit phone booth, I suddenly felt scared and vulnerable, talking briefly and hurrying back to the safety of the apartment. Previously I’d spent time in diverse urban areas, but never like this one with its massive, initially forbidding brownstones and rep for gang warfare vividly portrayed in “West Side Story.”
My fears proved groundless. The residents were pleasant and engaging, and the children threw themselves into the myriad games and activities, showering us more sedate but receptive middle-class types with abundant affection and appreciation. I was happily surprised to find that the program’s vibrant activities often encouraged a flow of upbeat, lively conversation among us counselors, bonding many of us in friendship and promoting a more insightful understanding of the neighborhood.
As planned, I stayed on after the summer, doing research for my dissertation. What I hadn’t counted on was how living in the neighborhood and participating in the daily routine affected me. One September evening I was walking back to my comfortable brownstone apartment. Except for an occasional car or someone’s distant voice, it was quiet and peaceful — oh so peaceful and appealing! I recalled that first night and realized I was barely starting to grasp the impact of the experience.
While some Americans recognize the benefits friendship can provide, there’ve been social trends downplaying its impact. The idea of the American dream has emphasized that ours is a country where every person can attain their innate potential, whatever it involves, regardless of their background. The dominant sense is that success is largely a solo venture.
Furthermore, a national sample of adults living in the U.S. indicated that several modern conditions inhibit friendships — including the pandemic’s disruptive effect, increased time parents often spend with their children, and a trend toward longer working hours. However, a large recent study has emphasized the significance of friends’ persistent influence.
Economist Ray Chetty and his associates published research analyzing over 72 million Facebook connections involving U.S. accounts, representing 84 percent of American adults aged 25 to 44. The investigation examined cross-class friendships, revealing that poor children growing up in counties providing extensive contact with affluent friends obtain adult incomes 20 percent higher than their low-income peers lacking this so-called “economic connectedness” — a factor producing better results than such highly regarded conditions as “school quality, family structure, job availability or a community’s racial composition.”
Consider Mari Bowie, whose low-income parents lost jobs and homes and eventually divorced. A significant point is that her mother provided strong support, encouraging her to work hard and advance herself — advice the girl carefully followed.
In high school, she became friends with some wealthy girls and was impressed with both their elegant lifestyle “and their parents — doctors, lawyers and pastors — [who] had different goals and plans for their children, including applying for college.”
Ms. Bowie explained, “I didn’t know anything about the SAT, and my friends’ parents signed up for this class, so I thought I should do that. I had friends’ parents look at my personal statements.” Their help paid off. She graduated college and law school, becoming a criminal defense lawyer in a firm to which a high school friend referred her. Extensive evidence indicates, however, that lowincome people are hardly the only beneficiaries of economic interconnectedness.
Journalist David Brooks, who grew up middle-class, cited “the transformational power of friendship” — that one’s friends are not only close by but “they get inside you.” From age 8 to 22, he attended and worked in a summer camp with children ranging from some of New York City’s poorest to its very rich. Through the years they “learned about one another’s worlds and created the joint world out of … [their] own friendships.”
These individuals have obtained a wide variety of jobs, but they still share a common view, feeling “extremely comfortable in social settings different from their own… [and] realiz[ing] how fun it is to resist the natural temptation to hang out with people like themselves.” The campers experienced what Brooks described as “social range,” extending themselves to make friends with diverse peers.
I applaud his enthusiastic outlook, recalling my East Harlem experience and others since. Like many people, though, I’ve missed opportunities. However, all of us can console ourselves, knowing there needn’t be a finality to this process — that there’s always the promise of new friendships.