Why Would Others Help Me?: How People Explain Why They Can (or Cannot) Rely on Family and Friends

Most people count on family and friends to assist them in times of need; this study asks why people think that they can count on them. We coded about 1,100 respondents’ open-ended explanations for why they could—or could not—rely on relatives and friends in a crisis, yielding about a dozen main themes. Respondents largely explained that relatives would help because of affection, secondarily because of relatives’ past support or norms of obligation. The small minority who doubted relatives’ help said that they had no kin ties, pointed to practical impediments, or claimed no need for relatives’ help. Respondents explained friends’ help in similar ways. Three master themes emerged: sentiment, exchange history, and practical impediments. Younger respondents emphasized sentiment to explain family help, women more often cited past exchanges, and the better-educated stressed exchange history with relatives but sentiment with friends. The heavy emphasis on personal affection departs from main accounts in the social support literature.