Sex differences in the structure and stability of children’s playground social networks and their overlap with friendship relations

Sex differences in social networks

Sex differences in the structure and stability of children’s playground social networks and their
overlap with friendship relations

Recent studies of peer relations processes emphasise an ecological approach to the
investigation of social networks (Kindermann, 1993; Kindermann & Valsiner, 1995). In their
bioecological model, Bronfenbrenner and Ceci (1994) conceptualise the individual at the centre of a
set of nested social contexts and highlight the influence of proximal, as opposed to distal, processes
that arise through everyday interactions with others. An individual’s social network, conceived as
the group of peers they most often hang about with, is an immediate social context where proximal
processes affecting children are likely to be in evidence. This approach emphasises that social
networks develop their own micro-culture and socialising effects. Within this ecological
perspective, Sutton-Smith (1982) argues that "the most important thing to know about peer culture
is what is going on there. That is, that we might learn more of the structure and more of the function
if we first studied what the action is (that is) the performances that are central to children..." (p68).
A prime arena for capturing the performances and processes involved in the formation and
functioning of enduring peer social networks is during break-time (or recess) where peers socialise
and play games together in groups (Blatchford, 1998; Blatchford, Baines & Pellegrini, 2003;
Pellegrini & Smith, 1998). It is this intrinsic group nature of playground life that led to the current
investigation of the social networks of boys and girls.

Sex Differences in Social Networks

Consistent with an ecological approach, recent research and theory on sex differences in peer
relations emphasises a notion of gender differentiated micro-worlds (Belle, 1989; Maccoby, 1998).
Central to the ‘two worlds’ model is the finding that children in early to middle childhood actively
organise themselves into homogenous gender networks (Belle, 1989; Benenson, 1990; Cairns, Xie

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