Book Reading #31 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Title:
Chapter 10: The Experience and Individuality of the Average Girl

Reference:
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)


Summary:
The chapter begins speaking of how young children do not quite know how to formulate sentences in the language but definitely do not know the courtesy language.  They had all been introduced to birth, death, and sex as the Samoans live revealed lives that have little privacy.  These have not seemed to affect the child in a negative way, however.

Concerning salacious talk, there is nonetheless no shame in the village.  This sort of talk is amongst young people and looked down upon in adults simply because it is unpleasant, not because it is expelled.

Mead looks at three families that are strictly biological in their living situations.  The girls in these families have a much more personal relationship with their parents but also contest their parents more.

She speaks of how homosexuality is simply play and something that young people do.

She concludes that adolescence is not marked with the drama or periods of crisis or stress that the West is.


Discussion:
This chapter seemed to touch on all the chapters prior not really introducing much new information.  Mead's thoughts seem all jumbled together as she rarely sticks at all to the chapter title.  It was like she just let her pen go and disregarded the reason she was writing any particular chapter.