KINDRED SPIRITS INSTEAD OF KIN.

When Brenda Lowes discovered she was pregnant, she was 34, single, working at a Toronto bar and renting a downtown apartment with two friends. Determined to give her child some stability, Lowes bought a house in the cozy Beaches neighbourhood. She converted it into two apartments, and one of her closest friends, Amy Marcus (whom she'd met 14 years earlier when both were working as cocktail waitresses), moved in upstairs. It was a friendship that, after Ilana was born in July 1986, became a godsend. The traditional family, buffeted by 40 years of social upheaval, is no longer a given for many Canadians. With many adults living far from their kin, and with the decline of marriage and other institutions, people are claiming lives -- and intimates -- that suit them rather than adhering to blood ties. Out with the family; in with friendship. Friends support one another in life's challenges. They commiserate over strained family relations. For some, friendship fills a void left by a ruptured childhood home. For others, it's an additional support network when parents or siblings live far away.There are numerous pop-culture manifestations of the way friends have, for many adults, supplanted family -- most notably the hugely popular TV series Friends.