Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

by Kayleen Schaefer

“I love you,” one of us will say. “Text me when you get home,” the other will say. We’re saying the same thing.

Women who might have assumed they could find care, kindness, and deep conversations only in romantic relationships are no longer limited to that plotline.

Text me when you get home. When women say this to each other, they’re also saying, Let’s keep talking. It’s my favorite possibility, that when we get home we’re probably going to send each other at least half a dozen more texts before the night is officially over.

her view on female friendships isn’t unique among women of her generation. She’s in her seventies now, and no longer feels like she has to soldier on being devoted only to her family. When she was a young wife and mother, she thought of friendships as an indulgence. They were nice, but not essential. What she was responsible for was taking care of her family, so she restrained herself from being interested in anything that would get in the way of that.

Men and women who had once looked for support from their friendships and extended families, even after they were married, now turned inward toward each other.

poorer, working-class women, who were white and non-white, continued to depend on larger networks, including relatives and female friends.