Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa
The publication of renowned anthropologist and student of anthropologist Franz Boas, Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa brought the sexual revolution to the public scene, as her thoughts concerning sexual freedom pervaded academia. Published in 1928, Mead's ethnography focused on the psychosexual development of adolescent children on the island of Samoa. She recorded that their adolescence was not in fact a time of "storm and stress" as Erikson's stages of development suggest, but that the sexual freedom experienced by the adolescents actually permitted them an easy transition from childhood to adulthood.
Her findings were later criticized by anthropologist Derek Freeman who later investigated her claims of promiscuity and conducted his own ethnography of Samoan society. Mead called for a change in suppression of sexuality in America and her work directly resulted in the advancement of the sexual revolution in the 1930s.
Read more about this topic: Sexual Revolution
Famous quotes containing the words mead and/or age:
“Mead had studied for the ministry, but had lost his faith and took great delight in blasphemy. Capt. Charles H. Frady, pioneer missionary, held a meeting here and brought Mead back into the fold. He then became so devout that, one Sunday, when he happened upon a swimming party, he shot at the people in the river, and threatened to kill anyone he again caught desecrating the Sabbath.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“When I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three.... The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)