The purposes of this study were (1) to understand the current situation of friendship among sixth-grade students; (2) to explore the gender differences in friendship among sixth-grade students; (3) to examine the relationships among self-esteem, emotion regulation and friendship among sixth-grade students. The participants were 710 sixth-grade students from nine elementary schools in Taipei County. The variables of interest were measured by the Friendship Questionnaire, Self-Esteem Scale, and Emotion Regulation Scale. The main findings were as follows: (1) About 87% of the students had at least one reciprocal friend, with the majority owning 2-3 reciprocal friends; (2) The sixth-grade students’perceptions of friendship quality were at the level of medium or upper; (3) Girls had much more best friends than boys and their friendship quality was higher than boys in most dimensions(i.e., help, security and trust, companionship and closeness); (4) There were three significant canonical correlations between self-esteem and friendship; (5) There were two significant canonical correlations between emotion regulation and friendship. Finally, based on the findings, some suggestions for educators and future researchers were proposed.