Preadolescent friendship and peer status have an impact on early adulthood adjustment. Friendship and Peer Rejection as Predictors of Adult Adjustment Catherine L. Bagwell, Michelle E. Schmidt, Andrew F. Newcomb, William M. Bukowski The idea that success in peer relations represents a critical aspect of social competence in childhood and adolescence has been supported by a well- developed research base over the past thirty years (Rubin, Bukowski, and Parker, 1998). The majority of this research has focused on children’s pop- ularity or status in their peer group, typically the other students in their school classroom or grade level. However, a separate body of work has con- sidered the features, characteristics, and developmental significance of chil- dren’s dyadic relationships with friends. As the chapters in this volume emphasize, both popularity (or avoiding rejection) in the larger peer group and establishment of close friendships are important developmental tasks for children and adolescents. Although many of the skills and competencies that lead to positive adjustment in the larger peer group are also those that forecast success in friendships, these two types of peer relations are not identical in their characteristic features or in the effects they have on chil- dren’s social and emotional well-being (Bukowski and Hoza, 1989). As our understanding of what peer relations look like, how they develop, and what predicts success or difficulty in establishing positive peer relationships has increased, investigators have paid greater attention to the developmental significance of these relationships. There are now a number of well-designed short-term longitudinal studies establishing links between poor peer relations in childhood—both peer rejection and the failure to form close friendships—and poor school adjustment and psychological health, loneliness, and problem behavior in later childhood or early adoles- cence (Boivin, Hymel, and Bukowski, 1995; Coie and others, 1995; Hoza, NEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, no. 91, Spring 2001 © Jossey-Bass, A Publishing Unit of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 25 2