Coming of Age in Samoa

Mead reports fieldwork carried out among young people, chiefly adolescent girls, in a village on the island of Ta'u in American Samoa, where she lived for between six and nine months and came to know, observed and interviewed sixty-eight young women between the ages of nine and twenty. The question that sent her to Samoa, as she puts it, was whether the disturbances that vex adolescents in the United States are due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilisation in which it occurs. After describing Samoan childhood and discipline, the structure of the household and the village, group life, music and dancing, and old age, she concludes that the passage from childhood to adulthood in Samoa was a smooth transition, not marked by the emotional distress, anxiety or confusion seen in America. She attributes this to the conditions of Samoan life: a stable and monocultural society, an extended household in which conflict could be defused by moving between homes, an abundance of role models, and an openness about birth, bodily function and death. The American girl, by contrast, must choose among the conflicting values of the adults around her. Culture, Mead argues, has a leading influence on development.

Written from the wikipedia article on the book.

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• Margaret Mead