The Childhood Roots of Adult Friendships

Think about the people you can truly count on — the friend you confide in, the relatives who show up when life gets hard. Where did those connections come from? This study asked over 200,000 adults across 22 countries to look back at their childhood and share what they experienced growing up.

Our ability to form deep, supportive bonds as adults is a capacity built or hindered by the world we grow up in.

The researchers wanted to know: what early life factors are connected to having close social connections as an adult? What they found is both surprising and deeply human. Having a good relationship with your mother as a child had the strongest positive connection to adult social support — people who felt close to their mom reported higher support later in life. Good relationships with fathers, excellent childhood health, attending religious services, and growing up in a financially comfortable family also tended to go hand in hand with stronger adult connections.

On the flip side, feeling like an outsider in your own family had the strongest negative connection — even stronger than experiencing abuse. Growing up in a very difficult financial situation and having parents who were divorced or never married also tended to mean less social support later on. But here is what makes this study fascinating: the strength of these connections varied a lot depending on where people lived. In some countries, a good maternal relationship was a powerful predictor of adult connections; in others, it barely mattered or even went the other direction. This tells us that while some childhood experiences seem to matter everywhere, culture plays a huge role in shaping how those early years echo into adulthood.