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Friendship
Objectives
Phrasal verbs; Gerund and infinitive constructionsReading
“You can choose your friends, but you can’t
choose your family.” That lines comes from American Writer Harper Lee’s book
“To Kill a Mockingbird.” Now compare her words to another famous expression: “Blood
is thicker than water.” This means that family will always be with you
while other people — with no blood connection — may come and go.
Having strong ties to family and friends has long been identified as an
important part of being happy and healthy. People need people. However, if
forced to choose which is more important, American researchers now say
friendship is more important than family. Their new study suggests that friends
may be more important than family, especially as we age. The study comes from
researchers at Michigan State University. They found the importance of
friendship on health and happiness grows as people get older.
William Chopik is an assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State
and was one of the lead researchers in this study. He says, “Friendships become
even more important as we age.” He adds that “keeping a few really good friends
around can make a world of difference for our health and well-being.” Chopik
also notes that we need to think of friendships as an investment in our future
happiness.
The Study
The
Michigan State researchers considered information from two separate surveys.
The first involved just over 271,000 subjects. They participated in a study on
health and happiness. The second survey had nearly 7,500 participants. Its
purpose was to study “relationship support” in older adults suffering from
chronic, or long-term, conditions.
In
the first group, both family and friendships influenced overall health and
happiness. However, in the second, researchers said that friendships “became a
stronger predictor of health and happiness” as people get older. Also, in the
second group, unhealthy friendships led to increased chronic conditions. With
supportive friends, however, Chopik noted that participants reported being
happier. One reason: people can keep the friendships that make them feel good
and move on from the ones that don’t. Family, on the other hand, will always be
with you. They can be helpful and enjoyable, but can also cause troubles.
Chopik explained that “there are now a few studies starting to show just
how important friendships can be for older adults.” In general, he said, they
show that friendships affect our day-to-day happiness and how long we live more
so than relationships with spouses and family. Friendships, he added, keep us
from being lonely, but keeping a friendship for a long time takes work. “If
a friendship has survived the test of
time,” he said, “you know it must be a good one, a person you turn to for
help and advice” and a person you want in your life.
This
may be good news for people who don’t have strong ties with family members. Not
all of us are born into the families we need, but we all have the ability to
make the friendships that we need.
Taken and adapted
from (10 May 2019):
https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/health-lifestyle-friends-or-family/3952739.html
