Kindergartners, 3rd, and 6th graders chose classmates whom they would and would not like to have on their team for an academic contest and as playmates. Ss also rated their classmates on likableness and academic ability. At all ages, children's choices for the academic competition and the play situation were significantly associated with their ratings of their classmates' academic and social competence, respectively. Ss typically referred to academic abilities to explain their teammate choices for the academic contest and to social competence or friendship to explain playmate choices. Questions about the stability of classmates' academic and social competencies revealed that not until 6th grade did Ss indicate that there are limits in the degree to which academic and social competencies could improve with effort.

Twenty-four dyads of 4-year-old children participated in this study. Six of the dyads were long-term friends (children who had been friends for three years), 12 dyads were short-term friends (friendships formed within the previous 6 months) and six of the dyads were never-friends. Children's joint play and communications were coded from videotapes. Dyads who more often used communicative behaviors to extend and clarify play also more often played in more complex ways. Long-term friendship dyads were more likely to use communicative behaviors that extended play and to play in a more complex way than either of the other two dyad types.

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Although the US does subsidize a portion of child-care services via tax credits for the middle class and subsidized care for low-income families, it has no parental-leave policy, no national system of child-care services, and no national standards of quality. This nonsystem of child care is in great contrast to the situation in most industrialized nations, which do have parental-leave and child-care systems with quality standards acceptable to most American experts. We believe that the greatest obstacle to such a system within the US lies in the premise that children are the responsibility of individual families and that responsible mothers will remain home to care for them. This is ironic in a country that claims to believe in diversity and parental choice. Our nonsystem of child care fails to serve the diverse needs of families and greatly restricts parents' choices.