Margaret Mead's Coming of age in Samoa

Margaret Mead's Coming of age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation is a study of child and adolescent development in Western Samoa during the 1920s. Mead studied the customs and habits of the villagers on Ta'u, one of three small islands in the Manu'a group, about a hundred miles east of Pago Pago.

The study of ethnography, or the scientific description of customs and habits among mankind, was the purpose for Mead's journey. Descriptive by definition, ethnography is limited by both the scientist-observer's objectivity and perspective within his or her frame of reference. Mead described the Samoans' birth through teen years from the perspective of an outsider looking in, with all the limitations imposed by such a design. Her idyllic portrayals of the islanders' stress-free lives were considered by many critics as unrealistic. It must be remembered, however, that her results are relative to life on Ta'u in the 1920s, from the perspective of an American ethnologist who tended to believe that culture plays as important a role as biology in determining how people behave.

Psychoanalysts who believe that physical and mental maturation require that a child pass through successive stages of physical and cognitive development, some of which may be stressful, had a difficult time accepting Mead's views on child development. Descriptions of inner psychological turmoil, particularly associated with adolescence, seemed to be missing from he

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ke a pin-wheel, climb a coconut tree, keep themselves afloat in a swimming hole . . . grate off the skin of a breadfruit or taro, sweep the sanded yard of the house, carry water from the sea, do simple washing and dance a somewhat individualized 'siva.'" Partly because of her young charges, and partly because of discouragements from young boys, the younger girl did not perform "'the more adventurous forms of work and play.'" For this reason, the girl also tended not to engage in cooperative activities and therefore did not learn the principles of group organization as well as did boys. As Cote notes, "On the issue of play for Samoan children, Mead wrote that despite the assignment of work tasks assigned to them ('which have a meaning in the structure of the whole society'), this did not mean 'that they have less time for play than American children who are shut up in schools nine to three o'clock every day.'" When the young girl became strong enough, she was relieved of her nursemaid duties, and could work on the plantations and carry produce back to the village. Most of the irritating, detailed routine of housekeeping and nursemaiding were performed by children under fourteen years of age. As the girls matured, they vent

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