“We were just talking ...”: Conversations in early adolescence

This paper explores young adolescents' experience of talk, examining changes in boys' and girls' patterns of communication with family and friends. The data consist of immediate self-reports provided by 401 5th–9th grade students during the course of one week of their normal lives. Results indicate that while time spent talking to friends increased dramatically across this age period, especially for girls, talk with family members remained stable. Analysis of topics of conversation suggests that older children turned to friends for discussions of age-related concerns while continuing to discuss daily issues with family members. Talk with friends did not appear to replace talk with family members but rather represented a new facet of the social world, supplementing existing family relationships.This research was supported by NIMH grant number MH38324, Stress in Daily Life During Early Adolescence, awarded to Reed Larson, and was carried out while the first author was a predoctoral fellow in the Clinical Research Training Program in Adolescence, jointly sponsored by The Center for the Study of Adolescence at Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center, and the Committee on Human Development at The University of Chicago, funded by NIMH institutional training grant number 2 T32 MH14668-12.Current research interests are family relationships in early adolescence, interpersonal conflict, and the study of daily psychological experience.Current research interests are the effects of maternal employment on children and adolescents and the study of day care.