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Girl Talk: What Science Can Tell Us About Female Friendship
A veteran science reporter's investigation into the fascinating and distinctive nature of women's friendships
In Girl Talk , New York Times science reporter Jacqueline Mroz takes on the science of female friendship -- a phenomenon that's as culturally powerful as it is individually mysterious. She examines friendship from a range of angles, from the historical to the experiential, with a scientific analysis that reveals new truths about what leads us to connect and build alliances, and then "break up" when a friendship no longer serves us.
Mroz takes a new look at how friendship has evolved throughout history, showing how friends tend to share more genetic commonalities than strangers, and that the more friends we have, the more empathy and pleasure chemicals are present in our brains. Scientists have also reported that friendship directly influences health and longevity; women with solid, supportive friendships experience fewer "fight or flight" impulses and stronger heart function, and women without friendships tend to develop medical challenges on par with those associated with smoking and excessive body weight.
With intimate reporting and insightful analysis, Mroz reveals new awareness about the impact of women's friendships, and how they shape our culture at large.
In Girl Talk , New York Times science reporter Jacqueline Mroz takes on the science of female friendship -- a phenomenon that's as culturally powerful as it is individually mysterious. She examines friendship from a range of angles, from the historical to the experiential, with a scientific analysis that reveals new truths about what leads us to connect and build alliances, and then "break up" when a friendship no longer serves us.
Mroz takes a new look at how friendship has evolved throughout history, showing how friends tend to share more genetic commonalities than strangers, and that the more friends we have, the more empathy and pleasure chemicals are present in our brains. Scientists have also reported that friendship directly influences health and longevity; women with solid, supportive friendships experience fewer "fight or flight" impulses and stronger heart function, and women without friendships tend to develop medical challenges on par with those associated with smoking and excessive body weight.
With intimate reporting and insightful analysis, Mroz reveals new awareness about the impact of women's friendships, and how they shape our culture at large.
288 pages, Paperback
First published November 13, 2018
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368 people want to read
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August 8, 2019
I've rarely been disappointed enough by a book to take the time to write a thorough review, but this book was just so reductive, shallow, and not what it promised to be.
1. This book lacks organization almost entirely. It reads like a series of undergraduate term papers consisting mostly of facts thrown together haphazardly at the last minute. It has no overarching thesis or subject besides "female friendship," no conclusion, and no obvious structure. Even though each chapter does stick to a particular topic, anecdotes and factual tidbits are arranged seemingly at random within each chapter. In one case, the author repeats *the exact same quote* from a source two pages later.
2. Only six of the ten chapters are really about women's friendships. The rest are about friendship generally, cross-cultural differences in friendship, "sex differences" (more on this later, oof), or, most bizarrely, how technology affects human communication in general.
3. The author spends multiple chapters in a row parroting *the most bullshit* evopsych claims about gender differences I've ever seen. Women are more emotional, women's friendships are more "fragile" (these are practically word-for-word quotes there), men don't seek social support from friends, all of this is because historically women had to leave their homes and move in with their husbands' families when they married (to say nothing of the fact that actual evolution moves a lot more slowly than that, so this can't really explain supposed biological differences in friendship patterns). After dozens of pages of this, there are a few pages where some of this is refuted by citations and quotes from important scholars like Cordelia Fine, but that's kind of too little too late after many many paragraphs of unnuanced, simplistic claims about biological sex differences.
4. In general, the author repeatedly makes extremely generalized statements about complex topics like social relationships and mental health--sometimes she's quoting or citing researchers and leaves their claims unexplored further, but other times she seems to be stating her own opinion. For instance, in the chapter on technology, she straight-up writes, "Kids going to college are lonelier these days because they're having a harder time making new friends and connecting due to social media." I just. What. No mention of current political or economic issues, class differences, changes in parenting styles...There is no evidence cited to justify such an extreme claim, besides more opinion and illogical interpretations of particular studies.
5. In a section on "toxic friends" (a loaded term if I ever heard one), there are a few paragraphs in which the author and one of her sources literally claim that people with borderline personality disorder are abusive and often "toxic." I'm going to just pull-quote this because it has to be seen to be believed:
"Other times, mental illness can play a factor in toxic friends. For instance, according to Jalma, women who suffer from borderline personality disorder--a mental illness characterized by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships--lack a solid sense of self, and every interaction is a potential for rejection. They tend to be needy and critical and feel frustrated much of the time. Their needs never seem to be met--and they probably suffered some kind of trauma as a child.
...[Jalma] likens these relationships to domestic abuse situations, and she gives the metaphor of frogs boiling in a pot."
Dr. Jalma is a clinical psychologist who sees clients, which just horrifies me, but Mroz doesn't come out looking great in this passage either. "and they probably suffered some kind of trauma as a child." What the fuck? As a therapist and a person who has experienced mental illness, all of this profoundly offends me and should never have passed an editor's review.
In general, Mroz has taken a completely uncritical and uncomplicated passing glance at a subject that has been poorly researched and subject to sexist bias, rather than taking the opportunity to probe and explore some of these claims about how women's friendships are "more fragile" and contain "more drama." (There's literally a whole section about an interview subject who's apparently some sort of Chill Girl and talks about how she won't be friends with women at all because of "the drama." This is presented without any sort of critique or further exploration.)
There were a few positives about this book--some of the research presented was interesting and new to me, such as the studies showing that women with breast cancer have better health outcomes and survival if they have more friends. Some of the stories and anecdotes were interesting too, especially the one at the very end about friendships between Black and white women. But overall, I cannot recommend this book whatsoever and wish this important subject had gotten the nuanced treatment it deserves.
1. This book lacks organization almost entirely. It reads like a series of undergraduate term papers consisting mostly of facts thrown together haphazardly at the last minute. It has no overarching thesis or subject besides "female friendship," no conclusion, and no obvious structure. Even though each chapter does stick to a particular topic, anecdotes and factual tidbits are arranged seemingly at random within each chapter. In one case, the author repeats *the exact same quote* from a source two pages later.
2. Only six of the ten chapters are really about women's friendships. The rest are about friendship generally, cross-cultural differences in friendship, "sex differences" (more on this later, oof), or, most bizarrely, how technology affects human communication in general.
3. The author spends multiple chapters in a row parroting *the most bullshit* evopsych claims about gender differences I've ever seen. Women are more emotional, women's friendships are more "fragile" (these are practically word-for-word quotes there), men don't seek social support from friends, all of this is because historically women had to leave their homes and move in with their husbands' families when they married (to say nothing of the fact that actual evolution moves a lot more slowly than that, so this can't really explain supposed biological differences in friendship patterns). After dozens of pages of this, there are a few pages where some of this is refuted by citations and quotes from important scholars like Cordelia Fine, but that's kind of too little too late after many many paragraphs of unnuanced, simplistic claims about biological sex differences.
4. In general, the author repeatedly makes extremely generalized statements about complex topics like social relationships and mental health--sometimes she's quoting or citing researchers and leaves their claims unexplored further, but other times she seems to be stating her own opinion. For instance, in the chapter on technology, she straight-up writes, "Kids going to college are lonelier these days because they're having a harder time making new friends and connecting due to social media." I just. What. No mention of current political or economic issues, class differences, changes in parenting styles...There is no evidence cited to justify such an extreme claim, besides more opinion and illogical interpretations of particular studies.
5. In a section on "toxic friends" (a loaded term if I ever heard one), there are a few paragraphs in which the author and one of her sources literally claim that people with borderline personality disorder are abusive and often "toxic." I'm going to just pull-quote this because it has to be seen to be believed:
"Other times, mental illness can play a factor in toxic friends. For instance, according to Jalma, women who suffer from borderline personality disorder--a mental illness characterized by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships--lack a solid sense of self, and every interaction is a potential for rejection. They tend to be needy and critical and feel frustrated much of the time. Their needs never seem to be met--and they probably suffered some kind of trauma as a child.
...[Jalma] likens these relationships to domestic abuse situations, and she gives the metaphor of frogs boiling in a pot."
Dr. Jalma is a clinical psychologist who sees clients, which just horrifies me, but Mroz doesn't come out looking great in this passage either. "and they probably suffered some kind of trauma as a child." What the fuck? As a therapist and a person who has experienced mental illness, all of this profoundly offends me and should never have passed an editor's review.
In general, Mroz has taken a completely uncritical and uncomplicated passing glance at a subject that has been poorly researched and subject to sexist bias, rather than taking the opportunity to probe and explore some of these claims about how women's friendships are "more fragile" and contain "more drama." (There's literally a whole section about an interview subject who's apparently some sort of Chill Girl and talks about how she won't be friends with women at all because of "the drama." This is presented without any sort of critique or further exploration.)
There were a few positives about this book--some of the research presented was interesting and new to me, such as the studies showing that women with breast cancer have better health outcomes and survival if they have more friends. Some of the stories and anecdotes were interesting too, especially the one at the very end about friendships between Black and white women. But overall, I cannot recommend this book whatsoever and wish this important subject had gotten the nuanced treatment it deserves.
September 29, 2022
Jacqueline Mroz, an acclaimed journalist who often writes about reproductive and family issues, investigates the science behind our friendships by speaking with evolutionary anthropologists, psychologists and interviewing neuroscientists who’ve conducted research studies.
Her book, Girl Talk: What Science Can Tell Us About Female Friendship, looks at the history of friendships from a multicultural viewpoint. It begins with relationships of Nuns and moves on through Quakers, Witches, Victorian-era women to present day.
In looking back at my history, the vast majority of my early years involved family sporting activities and there was not much time to focus on female relationships, ergo, I didn't begin to value my female friendships until high school.
My most cherished high school friend was so much fun. We enjoyed the same school activities. I hung out at her house and her at mine. On the weekends, we went to the movies and shopping. We would throw parties for one another and during the summers we vacationed together.
After high school, she went off to college and I got married. She returned to be my maid of honor. She never married but moved nearby and remained my bestie for the rest of her life. She passed away, without warning, thirteen years ago and I miss her greatly! Social media affords me the opportunity to keep in touch with her family and other friends I had back in high school.
Mroz, with the help of a friend, conducted a study of women’s friendships learning that the number one thing women look for from a friend is support.
Nowadays, my closest girlfriend is older than me and lives about ten minutes away. We share similar ambitions and interests. We get together frequently and chat over coffee or lunch and call and reassure one another when it comes to our work and family issues.
I believe a friend allows us to focus time and energy on someone other than ourselves and yet we are gifted in return by having someone to share with. So, it’s not really surprising to me that it’s professed that breaking up with a close friend can feel worse than a divorce- and worse yet- is having a friend pass that you can no longer attempt to contact.
This compilation includes Mroz’s own experiences, as well as friends, and looks at famous relationships and how to forge deep and meaningful friendships. This book also shows the value of striving to comprehend behaviors, recognize influences, and develop a clear picture of what friendships are for and how they shape our culture.
I received a copy of this insightful book from Shadin Al-Dossari with the Marketing Department of Da Capo Press | Lifelong Books | Seal Press An Imprint of Perseus Books | A Hachette Book Group Company
Her book, Girl Talk: What Science Can Tell Us About Female Friendship, looks at the history of friendships from a multicultural viewpoint. It begins with relationships of Nuns and moves on through Quakers, Witches, Victorian-era women to present day.
In looking back at my history, the vast majority of my early years involved family sporting activities and there was not much time to focus on female relationships, ergo, I didn't begin to value my female friendships until high school.
My most cherished high school friend was so much fun. We enjoyed the same school activities. I hung out at her house and her at mine. On the weekends, we went to the movies and shopping. We would throw parties for one another and during the summers we vacationed together.
After high school, she went off to college and I got married. She returned to be my maid of honor. She never married but moved nearby and remained my bestie for the rest of her life. She passed away, without warning, thirteen years ago and I miss her greatly! Social media affords me the opportunity to keep in touch with her family and other friends I had back in high school.
Mroz, with the help of a friend, conducted a study of women’s friendships learning that the number one thing women look for from a friend is support.
Nowadays, my closest girlfriend is older than me and lives about ten minutes away. We share similar ambitions and interests. We get together frequently and chat over coffee or lunch and call and reassure one another when it comes to our work and family issues.
I believe a friend allows us to focus time and energy on someone other than ourselves and yet we are gifted in return by having someone to share with. So, it’s not really surprising to me that it’s professed that breaking up with a close friend can feel worse than a divorce- and worse yet- is having a friend pass that you can no longer attempt to contact.
This compilation includes Mroz’s own experiences, as well as friends, and looks at famous relationships and how to forge deep and meaningful friendships. This book also shows the value of striving to comprehend behaviors, recognize influences, and develop a clear picture of what friendships are for and how they shape our culture.
I received a copy of this insightful book from Shadin Al-Dossari with the Marketing Department of Da Capo Press | Lifelong Books | Seal Press An Imprint of Perseus Books | A Hachette Book Group Company
August 19, 2019
I really enjoyed this audiobook. Lot of useful information. I really liked learning the evolution of female friendships and how they differ between cultures. I was actually able to bring up some of the topics with my friends. Highly recommend this book.
December 10, 2018
I read Mroz’s last book on the multiple offspring of sperm donors and found the stories on the specific cases engrossing and the highlight of the book. Consequently, I was excited to read “Girl Talk” for the same reason. As it turned out, though the personal stories were interesting and engaging, I was surprised to find the study of friendships so much more enlightening than I expected, particularly how friendships developed over the millennia. I enjoyed the chapter on famous friendships and found the chapter on how friendships differ from culture to culture to be chock-full of surprises. For example, in some cultures, if someone has to give a negative response, instead of saying no, they just won’t respond. Their lack of response means no, which explains so many times I thought people were just being rude. There’s also a chapter on how women’s friendships differ from men’s. Also interesting: As a gay man, I found that my experience with friendships tends to have aspects of both male and female friendships as defined in the book. Definitely worth the read.
Read
February 28, 2024It was interesting to learn that the female brain is only truly capable of holding 4-5 close female friendships and why/how that came to be. The entire chapter about animals was a bit unnecessary (and boring). The book was sort of dry, but had tidbits of interesting information. If anything, it validated how sometimes friends come and go in our lives and that’s normal.
December 29, 2022
More sociological than scientific.
January 25, 2019
The history of female friendship was interesting. Keep working the Shine Theory, we are better together. Solidifies that our relationships enrich our lives
May 1, 2019
I love the idea of this book, and the book started off so well. The first few chapters went smoothly but it drones on for a while and didn't keep me engaged.
January 1, 2019
As a man, I’m clearly not in the target audience for a book entitled Girl Talk. Yet, if you have even a general interest in social psychology and what makes our close relationships thrive, Jacqueline Mroz has much to offer. Girl Talk is based on lots of solid research by behavioral scientists, whom she interviewed in depth. In addition to that, she cites a mind-bogglingly wide range of other sources, from historians to neuroscientists, from literary figures to everyday people.
Yet, Girl Talk never becomes dry or academic. It’s a fascinating and enjoyable read, primarily because of the many anecdotes she includes. Mroz is a terrific story teller! Stories stemming from her interviews, stories about friendships between famous people, writers, historical figures, celebrities, even heart-warming stories about friendships between animals! Some are just a paragraph or two long, others go on for pages, but they’re all quite relevant to the points she’s trying to make, and they lighten and add charm to the presentation.
But Girl Talk isn’t just a tribute to the beauties of close friendships. Mroz deals with relationship conflict and break-ups head on. There’s the stereotype that women’s friendships can be very competitive, back-biting, and snarky, starting with “mean girls” in adolescence, evolving into competition in the workplace and hurtful gossip in their social circles. She provides a very thorough analysis of these phenomena from a variety of perspectives. It’s one of the most enlightening sections of the book.
Full disclosure, I’ve done research in cultural variations in close friendship, and Ms. Mroz interviewed me for her chapter on that topic. I tend to hold my breath when journalists ask me about my work, because they so frequently sensationalize or, in other ways, misrepresent my results. Not true in this case. In addition to me, she spoke with leading researchers in my field, and she characterized our findings accurately, in a reasonably comprehensive manner, and with a great deal of charm. It should give potential readers faith in the validity of all of her assertions about the nature of friendship. She has clearly done her homework.
I highly recommend this book. With each chapter, you will find yourself reflecting on your own friendships in ways that you may have never considered before.
Yet, Girl Talk never becomes dry or academic. It’s a fascinating and enjoyable read, primarily because of the many anecdotes she includes. Mroz is a terrific story teller! Stories stemming from her interviews, stories about friendships between famous people, writers, historical figures, celebrities, even heart-warming stories about friendships between animals! Some are just a paragraph or two long, others go on for pages, but they’re all quite relevant to the points she’s trying to make, and they lighten and add charm to the presentation.
But Girl Talk isn’t just a tribute to the beauties of close friendships. Mroz deals with relationship conflict and break-ups head on. There’s the stereotype that women’s friendships can be very competitive, back-biting, and snarky, starting with “mean girls” in adolescence, evolving into competition in the workplace and hurtful gossip in their social circles. She provides a very thorough analysis of these phenomena from a variety of perspectives. It’s one of the most enlightening sections of the book.
Full disclosure, I’ve done research in cultural variations in close friendship, and Ms. Mroz interviewed me for her chapter on that topic. I tend to hold my breath when journalists ask me about my work, because they so frequently sensationalize or, in other ways, misrepresent my results. Not true in this case. In addition to me, she spoke with leading researchers in my field, and she characterized our findings accurately, in a reasonably comprehensive manner, and with a great deal of charm. It should give potential readers faith in the validity of all of her assertions about the nature of friendship. She has clearly done her homework.
I highly recommend this book. With each chapter, you will find yourself reflecting on your own friendships in ways that you may have never considered before.
March 12, 2019
Audiobook rating: 3 stars
Book rating: 3.5 stars
Initial thoughts: The audiobook narration was absolutely terrible. The narrator was very stilted, making unnatural breaks as though she was was reading an extremely long list rather than prose. Before every break, the narrator added inflections as one does at the and of a sentence, which made listening doubly painful. I was quite difficult to concentrate on the content because I was distracted by the annoying flow of speech. Still, I persisted because this is a fascinating topic.
Mroz discussed why female friendships tend to be much more tenuous than male ones, while also exploring their depth, positive impacts on health (both mental and physical), and how they're a social glue that help women fulfil their roles in society as employees, mothers, grandmothers, wives, etc.
As expected, this discourse led to a lot of generalisations, although the author stopped short of making sweeping statements that assumed all women are the same. She made concessions for women who deviate from the female "norm". Sadly, she didn't explore why that is.
In some regards, I did find Girl Talk insightful, as it shed light on why I might have lost some of my closest friends over the years in deeply painful and confusing "friendship break-ups". However, a significant amount of this book hinged on the author's personal anecdotes. Given that more than a hundred women were surveyed, more weight should've been placed on that research.
Book rating: 3.5 stars
Initial thoughts: The audiobook narration was absolutely terrible. The narrator was very stilted, making unnatural breaks as though she was was reading an extremely long list rather than prose. Before every break, the narrator added inflections as one does at the and of a sentence, which made listening doubly painful. I was quite difficult to concentrate on the content because I was distracted by the annoying flow of speech. Still, I persisted because this is a fascinating topic.
Mroz discussed why female friendships tend to be much more tenuous than male ones, while also exploring their depth, positive impacts on health (both mental and physical), and how they're a social glue that help women fulfil their roles in society as employees, mothers, grandmothers, wives, etc.
As expected, this discourse led to a lot of generalisations, although the author stopped short of making sweeping statements that assumed all women are the same. She made concessions for women who deviate from the female "norm". Sadly, she didn't explore why that is.
In some regards, I did find Girl Talk insightful, as it shed light on why I might have lost some of my closest friends over the years in deeply painful and confusing "friendship break-ups". However, a significant amount of this book hinged on the author's personal anecdotes. Given that more than a hundred women were surveyed, more weight should've been placed on that research.
December 25, 2024
Buku ini berisikan kumpulan sains di balik why mahkluk hidup bersahabat. Di dalamnya dibedah dari bagaimana mammals (mamalia) berteman. Untuk betina, mereka lebih mudah berteman untuk menjadi nest keturunannya. Sedangkan jantan, untuk menjaga teritori. Diketahui, binatang maupun binatang sosial (manusia) yang berteman dan bersosialisasi lebih mengembangkan bagian otak frontal lobe nya. Pada manusia, mengapa perempuan ditemukan lebih mudah untuk berteman, karena pembawaan evolusi bahwa perempuan harus menjaga anak keturunan dengan resource yang lebih banyak. Dengan penjagaan anak keturunan yang lebih banyak dan baik, maka keturunan akan lebih mudah untuk survive dan thrive. Selain itu, perempuan juga cenderung untuk masuk ke lingkungan yang baru setelah menikah, itu memungkinkan perempuan untuk mengeskalasi kemampuan bersosialisasi, berkoneksi, dan adaptasi.
Perbedaan persahabatan laki-laki dan perempuan. Persahabatan laki-laki lebih low maintenance dan akan berujung pada bromance. Sedangkan perempuan lebih fragile dan volatile sebab banyak sekali underlying yang rentan untuk itu. Perempuan akan lebih terkoneksi secara emosional dan itu menjadikan hubungan persahabatan jadi sedikit lebih rumit dibanding laki-laki.
Overall, buku ini mudah sekali untuk dipahami, namun isinya lebih cenderung kepada sosial sains tanpa back-up natural sains yang berpotensi kepada pseudo science dan generalisasi umum. Secara metode pun kebanyakan kualitatif dengan narasumber yang tidak beragam.
Perbedaan persahabatan laki-laki dan perempuan. Persahabatan laki-laki lebih low maintenance dan akan berujung pada bromance. Sedangkan perempuan lebih fragile dan volatile sebab banyak sekali underlying yang rentan untuk itu. Perempuan akan lebih terkoneksi secara emosional dan itu menjadikan hubungan persahabatan jadi sedikit lebih rumit dibanding laki-laki.
Overall, buku ini mudah sekali untuk dipahami, namun isinya lebih cenderung kepada sosial sains tanpa back-up natural sains yang berpotensi kepada pseudo science dan generalisasi umum. Secara metode pun kebanyakan kualitatif dengan narasumber yang tidak beragam.
June 21, 2022
I wanted to understand female friendships dynamics and logic, and this book promised to talk about those.
Not very illuminating.
I don’t understand much of some of the things women do, never have, and don’t understand a single bit better after this book. I was born with female bots, raised as a girl etc, so with the logic of this book, there’s some fundamental biological fail as apparently understanding girl friendships is nearly innate.
There is talk about (female) animals friendships and how those form and manifest. But the many many weird, unexplained,unwritten rules about how women act aren’t enough there.
There are a lot of stories about friendships, and some about how women knew it ended, and it’t like reading boredpanda or buzzfeed. Drama,drama, drama. Emotional reasoning, lack of honesty in communication, emotional neediness and dunping, and the list goes on. Gee, I wonder why most of my friends are not female. I hate drama. And I’m not even a step closer to understanding the topic this book was about.
Not very illuminating.
I don’t understand much of some of the things women do, never have, and don’t understand a single bit better after this book. I was born with female bots, raised as a girl etc, so with the logic of this book, there’s some fundamental biological fail as apparently understanding girl friendships is nearly innate.
There is talk about (female) animals friendships and how those form and manifest. But the many many weird, unexplained,unwritten rules about how women act aren’t enough there.
There are a lot of stories about friendships, and some about how women knew it ended, and it’t like reading boredpanda or buzzfeed. Drama,drama, drama. Emotional reasoning, lack of honesty in communication, emotional neediness and dunping, and the list goes on. Gee, I wonder why most of my friends are not female. I hate drama. And I’m not even a step closer to understanding the topic this book was about.
April 6, 2020
Great book! Mroz sets out to examine female friends - what they look like, what we get from them, and why we act the ways that we do in them. I saw a lot of myself and my own friendships in these pages. I was especially intrigued by the chapter on friend break-ups and the chapter on differences between male and female friendships. The author makes a point to explain why we have friend break-ups and what we can do to ease that pain but also why men don't typically have that experience with friends. I think this is something that we need to examine more as individuals and as a society. The only part of the book that I didn't care for is the lack of a central story to tie all of the ideas together. The book would have been better served by a frame story to tie everything in together; as it is now, the book reads like a series of essays on female friendship with no real transition from one topic to the next.
July 2, 2024
- Men bond through activities, whereas women bond through talking and connecting
- Men sought functional friends, whereas women sought for small, intimate, secure relationships with other women
- Men can not connect with other men for years and still consider them as close friends. Whereas silence means the end for most female friendship
- Men aren't scrutinizing their friendships all the time. Whereas women do.
- Women have hard time with competition and harder time repairing damages in their friendship
- Men will work with other men even if they don't like the way other men look. For women, they only like to work with other women who are appealing in some way
- Men make friends during HS and College and find it harder to make friends afterwards. Women are much better at forming relationships post College
- Men sought functional friends, whereas women sought for small, intimate, secure relationships with other women
- Men can not connect with other men for years and still consider them as close friends. Whereas silence means the end for most female friendship
- Men aren't scrutinizing their friendships all the time. Whereas women do.
- Women have hard time with competition and harder time repairing damages in their friendship
- Men will work with other men even if they don't like the way other men look. For women, they only like to work with other women who are appealing in some way
- Men make friends during HS and College and find it harder to make friends afterwards. Women are much better at forming relationships post College
November 30, 2018
Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for an advanced copy.
This book is full of gold nuggets of information.
At times there were harder to find, but if the reader sticks with it I believe they will enjoy this book.
The style of writing is more like a collection of articles. At some points the author includes anecdotal stories and I want sure whom the people were. They may have been from the study that the author conducted.
I was looking for more information from the study that the author conducted.
Overall, there were some really fun chapters and information.
This book is full of gold nuggets of information.
At times there were harder to find, but if the reader sticks with it I believe they will enjoy this book.
The style of writing is more like a collection of articles. At some points the author includes anecdotal stories and I want sure whom the people were. They may have been from the study that the author conducted.
I was looking for more information from the study that the author conducted.
Overall, there were some really fun chapters and information.
Read
September 12, 2019Meh. It definitely brought up some interesting ideas and provided a good amount of evidence. However, I had an issue with the way she presented this evidence at times--as if it was blatant fact rather than merely evidence supporting a claim. Also occasionally presented two pieces of evidence that conflicted with each other to support one claim, and would gloss over or ignore the conflict. Overall, okay. Interesting to read and think about.
March 15, 2020
The only valuable part is a chapter on cultural influences on friendship ideals. No need to stick around for a needless recap of things you already know (women who end friendships are distressed about it? Wow, who knew?), discussions about men (not what I signed up for), or an eye-roller of a chapter on social media that contains exactly the squalling moral panic you’d expect if you ask anyone over 60 what they think of Social Media.
July 29, 2020
This book mostly felt like a collection of various research that had something to do with either females, friendship, and sometimes actual female friendship. Almost like the author had an idea and did a bunch of work to research it, but when she found that it didn't really add up to anything spectacular she just kinda taped it all up hoping it would fit and make sense.
October 19, 2022
I don’t usually read nonfiction, but the topic of female friendships caught my attention. I would’ve liked more information/analysis on male-female friends, friendships across different races/cultures… this seemed less focused on female friendships and more focused on friendship in general. I found about 30% of it truly engaging… the rest I had to push through.
October 26, 2018
I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.
I learned a lot of facts from this book. Having said that, I’m not quite not sure what it was trying to teach me, and I’m not sure why I had to know
I learned a lot of facts from this book. Having said that, I’m not quite not sure what it was trying to teach me, and I’m not sure why I had to know
June 30, 2019
This is actually a really interesting book. It looks deep into friendships between women and how and why they are the way they are. Something every girl should read, to learn a little more about herself and the friendships she has.
March 12, 2022
Finally finished this - it was super informative and gave me a lot to think about, especially as I navigate changes in my friendship dynamics after becoming a widow. It's baffling me less now. I hope more books are written about friendship, especially the female kind.
June 18, 2020
Friendship matters.
March 23, 2021
Easy read but could have been a long Atlantic article. Superficial takeaways throughout. Would have liked more depth of reflection and consideration of findings. Ended abruptly.
January 12, 2023
Doesn't describe me very well. Generalized - good personal stories but need more studies for more data.
June 13, 2024
Love it, but I rlly need to stop forgetting about a book when I’m halfway through it.
January 21, 2020
I'm reviewing this even though I haven't finished it: I am about 85% of the way done and probably will circle back to it, and maybe writing this review will help me get through my frustrations to just finish it, already, but mostly what I feel about this book is that I wish someone else would take her bibliography and write the book I *wish* she had written. Because someone should have written a much better book than this based on that research.
This book reads like a draft, not a completed book, and it is a hugely frustrating read. The author has clearly spent a lot of time with this subject and has taken a lot of notes, but she doesn't appear to have come to any conclusions or insights based on that research. The result is a book that reads like a series of notecards assembled into a manuscript, rather than a coherent, sustained intellectual work.
It also announces itself as something that it simply is not -- I assume this was a marketing decision made by the publisher, rather than the author, but I read a lot of science writing, and this is not that. While some chapters discuss the science behind female bonding in anthropology and primateology, some present evo-psych claptrap with very little critical insight, and just as much of the book is spent on flimsy literary criticism and glancing, patchy historical overviews as on relating interviews with scientists.
Even when she is writing in what could be considered more evidence-based ways, she has a grating over-reliance on examples that make no claim to being representative of women's experience, from repeatedly citing data she collected by surveying a sample of women she herself acknowledges is non-representative, to an abundance of anecdotal case studies of people who have no particular claim to experiences that are typical of women's friendships more generally.
One case that she devotes several pages to is a friendship between men in which one man was straight and the other gay, childhood friends who relocated to the same town and then saw their friendship fall apart. I was completely perplexed by her choice to spend so much time on this: it said nothing at all about women's friendships, of course, and if it was meant as a foil, it didn't do that either: it didn't illustrate her theory about men staying within their genetically-similar kinship networks, and it didn't support her theory about men having straightforward, direct confrontations that allow their friendships to continue (as opposed to women's theoretically less stable and more stressful friendships, where Mroz claims indirect communication is the norm). She didn't take the opportunity to consider whether gay and straight men might have different strategies for building friendship networks, or whether gender could even be understood in the same way for gay and straight men. Given the very strong emphasis she gives to heterosexual relationships and marriage in her understanding of the terms "men" and "women," and how hetero pair-bonding is the framework for her entire conception of "friendship" vs. "kinship," this is a particularly weird, self-undermining example to highlight.
However, it is in keeping with the author's inexplicable lack of basic gender theory, even though she has read many of the people (like Cordelia Fine) who you'd think would have given her the insight to see through smplistic gender binaries, and some critical analysis of taking about women's friendships with language like "fragile," "manipulate," "drama," and "ingratiate".
It was the chapter on social media that really made me question why I was still spending my time on this book, since it's just a distillation of all the alarmist "computers are bad for us" think pieces ever written, and at that point it's clear that gender has just gone completely out the window.
By coincidence, I am reading Natalie Angier's Woman: an Intimate Geography at the same time as this book, and one thing I will say for Mroz is that she greatly expanded my appreciation for Angier, whose prose style is both arch and heavily purple. But Angier is sharp, coherent, feminist, and densely instructive, and even though they are 20 years old and predate social media by half a decade, her chapters on women's aggression and the bonds they make with each other were much more illuminating than all of Mroz's book.
This book reads like a draft, not a completed book, and it is a hugely frustrating read. The author has clearly spent a lot of time with this subject and has taken a lot of notes, but she doesn't appear to have come to any conclusions or insights based on that research. The result is a book that reads like a series of notecards assembled into a manuscript, rather than a coherent, sustained intellectual work.
It also announces itself as something that it simply is not -- I assume this was a marketing decision made by the publisher, rather than the author, but I read a lot of science writing, and this is not that. While some chapters discuss the science behind female bonding in anthropology and primateology, some present evo-psych claptrap with very little critical insight, and just as much of the book is spent on flimsy literary criticism and glancing, patchy historical overviews as on relating interviews with scientists.
Even when she is writing in what could be considered more evidence-based ways, she has a grating over-reliance on examples that make no claim to being representative of women's experience, from repeatedly citing data she collected by surveying a sample of women she herself acknowledges is non-representative, to an abundance of anecdotal case studies of people who have no particular claim to experiences that are typical of women's friendships more generally.
One case that she devotes several pages to is a friendship between men in which one man was straight and the other gay, childhood friends who relocated to the same town and then saw their friendship fall apart. I was completely perplexed by her choice to spend so much time on this: it said nothing at all about women's friendships, of course, and if it was meant as a foil, it didn't do that either: it didn't illustrate her theory about men staying within their genetically-similar kinship networks, and it didn't support her theory about men having straightforward, direct confrontations that allow their friendships to continue (as opposed to women's theoretically less stable and more stressful friendships, where Mroz claims indirect communication is the norm). She didn't take the opportunity to consider whether gay and straight men might have different strategies for building friendship networks, or whether gender could even be understood in the same way for gay and straight men. Given the very strong emphasis she gives to heterosexual relationships and marriage in her understanding of the terms "men" and "women," and how hetero pair-bonding is the framework for her entire conception of "friendship" vs. "kinship," this is a particularly weird, self-undermining example to highlight.
However, it is in keeping with the author's inexplicable lack of basic gender theory, even though she has read many of the people (like Cordelia Fine) who you'd think would have given her the insight to see through smplistic gender binaries, and some critical analysis of taking about women's friendships with language like "fragile," "manipulate," "drama," and "ingratiate".
It was the chapter on social media that really made me question why I was still spending my time on this book, since it's just a distillation of all the alarmist "computers are bad for us" think pieces ever written, and at that point it's clear that gender has just gone completely out the window.
By coincidence, I am reading Natalie Angier's Woman: an Intimate Geography at the same time as this book, and one thing I will say for Mroz is that she greatly expanded my appreciation for Angier, whose prose style is both arch and heavily purple. But Angier is sharp, coherent, feminist, and densely instructive, and even though they are 20 years old and predate social media by half a decade, her chapters on women's aggression and the bonds they make with each other were much more illuminating than all of Mroz's book.
December 14, 2022
While there is some interesting science cited throughout, this book suffers heavily from a strictly white, American perspective and disorganization of content. If you’re looking for an intersectional book about female friendships this is not it. And as other reviews have mentioned, a lot of the book is about friendship generally, not about female friendship specifically.
The first chapter sets this book up to be Western (mostly American) and white, without a shred of the intersectionality that the phrase “the true nature of female friendship” promised. Chapter 1 is meant to be a brief historical overview of the context of female friendship. Instead, it’s a weird laundry list of examples, mostly English and colonial/white American. It doesn’t even touch on matriarchal systems (Africa, Asia or Latin/South America). No mention at all of indigenous women. Blows past friendships between slaves and says nothing about the power, strength, and necessity of Black female friendship in any decade. Talks about Quakers, witches and Victorian white women and then switches weirdly to specific famous friendships, including “Mrs. Lincoln and a Former Slave” instead of using Elizabeth Keckley’s name in the subtitle. There is one random section about female communal living in a specific part of China that includes a problematic phrase about a Chinese (do you mean Mandarin? Cantonese? Specific dialect?) word for “female” being “slave,” when really it’s more the other way around if you’re going to try to use that linguistic quirk as evidence for something. I cannot believe the lack of exploration and representation of a topic that is billed as being so broad and universal. The chapter begins with female friendships in the context of Ancient Rome and Greece, the Bible, and nuns. Are you really telling me that female friendships were not important or that you did zero research in nomadic societies, in Africa, the birthplace of humanity, or in any indigenous cultures where child rearing alone is highly shared?? Women weren’t friends (or you you didn’t look for evidence) until convents in the Middle Ages?! Not buying it.
The chapter on the evolution of friendship mostly focuses on animals, but at one point in a paragraph about lions there’s a random sentence about “young girls in Africa” also grooming each other. Which begs the question of why this is included here? The implication being that these human girls are comparable to non-human animals. The chapter on men vs. women is full of gender generalizations that I find questionable given my own experiences, and lots of reinforcing negative gender stereotypes.
There’s a whole chapter on friendship in “other cultures” which reaffirms the fact that, although not stated or clarified in the book’s description or introduction, it’s about white, American friendship. One section at the very end of the book addresses race, but it’s not exactly comprehensive and it’s something that would have been better threaded throughout.
There is definitely some interesting material throughout the book, but for me it’s eclipsed by the white, colonial lens and the disorganization of the writing. There is a bibliography at the end, but no footnotes or endnotes to clarify support for any of the statements made. And there are random tidbits shoved into sections that don’t make sense, like the author couldn’t figure out where else to put them. There are tons of redundancies and repetitive ideas, as well as the use of names and anecdotes that are either hard to follow (who is this person again?) or don’t add much to the concepts being discussed. While some of the science cited is definitely fascinating and I feel very grateful for my friends and the experiences that I’ve had that are different from those described in the book, I found myself questioning the author’s interpretation of these studies a lot.
The first chapter sets this book up to be Western (mostly American) and white, without a shred of the intersectionality that the phrase “the true nature of female friendship” promised. Chapter 1 is meant to be a brief historical overview of the context of female friendship. Instead, it’s a weird laundry list of examples, mostly English and colonial/white American. It doesn’t even touch on matriarchal systems (Africa, Asia or Latin/South America). No mention at all of indigenous women. Blows past friendships between slaves and says nothing about the power, strength, and necessity of Black female friendship in any decade. Talks about Quakers, witches and Victorian white women and then switches weirdly to specific famous friendships, including “Mrs. Lincoln and a Former Slave” instead of using Elizabeth Keckley’s name in the subtitle. There is one random section about female communal living in a specific part of China that includes a problematic phrase about a Chinese (do you mean Mandarin? Cantonese? Specific dialect?) word for “female” being “slave,” when really it’s more the other way around if you’re going to try to use that linguistic quirk as evidence for something. I cannot believe the lack of exploration and representation of a topic that is billed as being so broad and universal. The chapter begins with female friendships in the context of Ancient Rome and Greece, the Bible, and nuns. Are you really telling me that female friendships were not important or that you did zero research in nomadic societies, in Africa, the birthplace of humanity, or in any indigenous cultures where child rearing alone is highly shared?? Women weren’t friends (or you you didn’t look for evidence) until convents in the Middle Ages?! Not buying it.
The chapter on the evolution of friendship mostly focuses on animals, but at one point in a paragraph about lions there’s a random sentence about “young girls in Africa” also grooming each other. Which begs the question of why this is included here? The implication being that these human girls are comparable to non-human animals. The chapter on men vs. women is full of gender generalizations that I find questionable given my own experiences, and lots of reinforcing negative gender stereotypes.
There’s a whole chapter on friendship in “other cultures” which reaffirms the fact that, although not stated or clarified in the book’s description or introduction, it’s about white, American friendship. One section at the very end of the book addresses race, but it’s not exactly comprehensive and it’s something that would have been better threaded throughout.
There is definitely some interesting material throughout the book, but for me it’s eclipsed by the white, colonial lens and the disorganization of the writing. There is a bibliography at the end, but no footnotes or endnotes to clarify support for any of the statements made. And there are random tidbits shoved into sections that don’t make sense, like the author couldn’t figure out where else to put them. There are tons of redundancies and repetitive ideas, as well as the use of names and anecdotes that are either hard to follow (who is this person again?) or don’t add much to the concepts being discussed. While some of the science cited is definitely fascinating and I feel very grateful for my friends and the experiences that I’ve had that are different from those described in the book, I found myself questioning the author’s interpretation of these studies a lot.
November 19, 2018
An interesting look at female friendship.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author. All opinions are my own.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author. All opinions are my own.
November 21, 2018
The topic of women's friendships is important and fascinating, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to read and review this book. Unfortunately it failed to live up to its description.
Mroz seems to have put a lot of time into compiling anecdote from her own life, her friends' experiences, and the academic work of others, without any sort of analysis. This leads to some stunning gaffes. For example, "Research has shown that it's impossible to tell apart the brains of little girls and little boys-- that is, until they reach adolescence." Okay, cool, but several pages later, " The differences in the human brain begin during fetal development, when female hormones...." If Mroz noticed the contradiction she did not comment on it.
With thanks to Seal Press and NetGalley for the ARC.
Mroz seems to have put a lot of time into compiling anecdote from her own life, her friends' experiences, and the academic work of others, without any sort of analysis. This leads to some stunning gaffes. For example, "Research has shown that it's impossible to tell apart the brains of little girls and little boys-- that is, until they reach adolescence." Okay, cool, but several pages later, " The differences in the human brain begin during fetal development, when female hormones...." If Mroz noticed the contradiction she did not comment on it.
With thanks to Seal Press and NetGalley for the ARC.
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