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The study of children's peer relationships has been well represented within the pages of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. Particularly over the last decade, the pace of publishing studies on peer relationships has increased. Despite this upswing in interest in peer relationships, significant gaps remain. In this article, we focus on a particularly overlooked and significant area of peer relationships, namely, the role of sex-segregated peer interactions and how these relate to development in early childhood. We review why this topic is important for researchers to consider and highlight promising directions for research that we hope will appear in future volumes of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly.
The study of children's peer relationships has a long and rich history (see Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998). This history is represented by investigations spanning important topics such as peer acceptance and rejection, friendship, leadership, peer group structure and formation, social conflict, and social networks, and these topics have permeated the field since its beginning (e.g., Monroe, 1899). Merrill-Palmer Quarterly is no exception to this historical trend-over the past 50 years articles on these topics routinely appeared in its pages. Moreover, the last two editors of Mer r III-Palmer Quarterly, Carolyn Shantz and Gary Ladd, brought to the journal their wealth of knowledge about peer relationships. In fact, one of the initial members of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly'?, editorial board (Leland H. Stott) had an interest in peer relationships (see Stott & Ball, 1957). Thus, it is not surprising that the archives of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly reflect the rich tradition of peer relationship research.
Despite the pace and intensity of the research on peer relationships, significant gaps remain. Several of these gaps have already been identified (see Rubin et al., 1998), and additional ones are discussed in other articles in this special issue (e.g., see Berndt). In this article, our purpose is to focus on an area that we feel has been neglected in the many studies of peer relationships. Specifically, we focus our attention on the sex-segregated nature of children's peer relationships during early childhood. We believe that research in this area is particularly important for advancing our understanding of the developmental implications of peer relationships because same-sex peer interactions provide the primary peer socialization context for young children. Moreover, boys' and girls' same-sex...