Are White Men Missing Out?: Differences in Friendship Closeness by Gender and Ethnoracial Identity

Research has consistently found that boys’ and men’s friendships are less close, intimate, supportive, and satisfying than girls’ and women’s friendships—what I term the gender friendship gap. It remains unclear, however, whether this gap is universal across ethnoracial groups. In this study, I used a large sample of emerging adults from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to investigate how gender and ethnoracial identity jointly shape reported closeness to best friends and predictors of that closeness. Results demonstrated that Black men, Latino men, and women of all ethnoracial groups reported levels of friendship closeness that were similar to one another after statistically controlling for friendship characteristics, communication patterns, and other respondent demographics. White men felt least close to their friends, which largely accounts for the previously documented gender friendship gap. Predictors of closeness varied by ethnoracial group, and some had gender-specific effects within ethnoracial groups as well. Notably, socioeconomic class and having a friend who was the same gender only predicted closeness for white respondents. These results suggest that past research on gender differences in friendship experience based on majority-white samples may not hold true for other ethnoracial groups.