Gang Free: Friendship Choices for Today's Youth (Fairview Press, 1995) Table of Contents Foreword by Hugh O’Brian Preface Acknowledgments Today’s Teenagers: On the Jet Track The Power of Self Forming Friendships, Finding Groups Peer Impact: From Recruitment to Refuge The Merging Process Seeking Significance, Plotting Purpose Putting Power to Work From Part to Present: The Role of the Family The Ties That Bind Opening the Lines To the Max Teaching by example Fostering Friendship: Parents and Teens Afterword Bibliography Index Other books in a similar category with Gang Free

Gang Free: Friendship Choices for Today's Youth (Fairview Press, 1995, 1996) Synopsis Life demands a lot of teenagers. Just ask them. One of the toughest demands for them involves their selection of people they want to call friends. This friendship-selection process covers a lot of issues, ranging from the first awareness of self-identity to the influence of peers to the separation from their parents. Though choosing friends is important, teenagers and their parents know very little about what it involves, and what it requires. Author and youth advocate Valerie Wiener worked with several hundred teenagers around the world to craft a book about how teenagers make friends. In her extensive research, she discovered that "belonging to a group" serves as one of the most emphatic driving forces for teenagers. And, teens overwhelmingly consider trust as the most crucial ingredient in their friendships. In this growing-up process, teenagers learn about their own choices. They also learn that these choices help them acquire the rewards and responsibilities of friendship and . . . ultimately, adulthood.