Obligatory friendships and surrogate kin: some questions for mentoring

1
Obligatory friendships and surrogate kin some
questions for mentoring

• Lynn Jamieson
• Centre for Research on Families and Relationships

2
Mentoring in personal life

• Many personal relationships involve an element of
  mentoring although they are typically more than
  and not reducible to mentoring
• Drawing on research literature on personal
  relationships
• Sociological theorising about intimacy

3
When are family friends and personal associates
mentors

• Role models gurus life coaches and those who
  pass on experience information advice.
• Acknowledging influence of and dependence on
  others sits uneasily with cultural emphasis on
  autonomy and reciprocity

4
Separating practical acts of care and intimacy

• practical acts of care as one of a repertoire of
  practices that sustain intimacy.
• Slippage between caring for and caring about
• Divisions between helpmates and soulmates
• Paid carer as friend but cared for as client not
  friend

5
Hierarchies of intimacy soulmates v. helpmates
friends v. kin

• Ideal typical notions of friends as based solely
  on mutual appreciation of each others unique
  qualities
• Variation in everyday meanings and practices of
  friendship
• Blurring of friendship voluntary kinship
  obligatory friends for disclosure and kin for
  help.
• Inequality and lack of reciprocity in friendship

6
Questions for mentoring

• Are there counter indications to extracting
  mentoring from affective personal relationships
• Does the obligatory character and asymmetry of
  more contractual sort of mentoring arrangement
  sit uneasily with a relationship of care
• Obligatory friends or surrogate kin