Women & Friendship

Accepted wisdom holds that women are too competitive to be friends, that husbands satisfy all emotional needs, that close friendships pass with girlhood. Women themselves know otherwise, suggest Block, a psychologist and author of Friendship, and Greenberg, a freelance writer. For many, friendships with other women provide vital psychological sustenance. Such friendships may indeed be at a more developed level than those among men, though little has been written of the female world in which common bonds of home and children have traditionally brought women together. But now the changing dimension of women's lives has put new strains on old bonds, note the authors: business rules make friendships more tenuous, the need for mentors and for male friendship more urgent, the desire for friendship in marriage insistent. Black and Greenberg cover these areas in an evenhanded, perceptive way, using case histories and interviews to show that ""women are . . . bonding around their changing needs and are cultivating lasting friendships that transcend any one issue.'' November