Parental Influences on Adolescent Friendship Pairings

Despite the fact that the processes of homophily, propinquity, and parenting have been identified as prominent precursors to friendship formation, little research has examined how they jointly affect youths’ friendships. The current study used Add Health data to fit into random crossed effect models and extended prior literature by connecting homophily and propinquity studies to parent-peer linkage research to quantify whether and how similarity of parents’ characteristics (SES, income, and educational aspirations) and practices (caring, monitoring, availability, and involvement) contribute to the relationship between homophily (youths’ similar academic performance [using AHAA], educational aspirations, delinquency, and drug use) and/or propinquity (neighborhood and local position propinquity) and friendship formation. The result indicates two pathways: fundamental influences and moderation influences through which parents influence the likelihood of friendship pairing. Findings suggested that parental influences worked more through homophily than through propinquity to fundamentally affect friendship pairings for both female and male. In terms of moderation, parental influences moderated propinquity more than homophily to affect friendship pairings. The research also identified gender differences. Three parental measures: SES, Educational Aspiration for Youths, and Smoking and Drinking had fundamental and moderation influences on same race female friendship pairings. Three parental measures: SES, Educational Aspiration for Youths, and Monitoring had fundamental and moderation influences on same race and age male friendship pairings