‘We were just a group of guys who liked to have a good time together’: Former fraternity members looking back on fraternity life

Abstract

The impact on fraternity membership on young men’s friendships is explored through in-depth interviews of 23 former fraternity members. Men’s friendships are explored in relation to the dyadic and structural components of fraternity membership. Former members negotiate their fraternity identity after graduation both socially and individually. Men offer accounts of how fraternity life impacted their adult friendships, their masculine identity, their consumption of alcohol, and their adult lives. Two processes, fraternal maintenance and fraternal divorce, are used to structure the renegotiation of fraternity identity in men’s post-graduate lives.