Samoan adults often treat their children like servants of the household, passing off huge majorities of daily responsibilities for them to do. By the age of just six or seven, the little girls of the household have the main task of tending to any new baby. Once the baby has been weaned from his mother, the baby is then handed over to the younger girl in the household. That child is now res

ponsible for the upbringing of this baby. Some of the girls are not even strong enough to carry a baby of six months old, yet they struggle to care for them as if they were their mothers.

Westerners, on the other hand, view sex as a major issue and focus intently on when to have it and who to have it with. Unlike the Samoans, most Westerners see sex as a big commitment to another person, full of meaning and emotion and future consequences. Here, it is not socially acceptable to freely have sex with many different people at the same time. Sexual relations in the Western culture typically have a deep meaning and are not treated as lightly as the Samoans traditionally do.

Finally we come to the question that stands between the Samoan and Western cultures; with such diversity between the two, are there any aspects of the Samoan life that Westerners would want to adopt to benefit their lifestyle? While every culture has its benefits, would we want to, for example, adopt the idea of having our children serve us as household servants? As adults this may give us more time to enjoy life with less stress, but what about our children? How can we ask them to give up their childhood to rush so early into the responsibilities of being an adult? Should we adopt the Samoans relaxed attitude toward education? And not give our children the encouragement to succeed and push them to strive for something more? Taking a casual view may take the stress off our young ones in some ways, but it would also often take away the motivation and incentive of a better future that they chose for themselves. Or perhaps we should have a more relaxed view on sex like the Samoans and let our children freely have sex without analyzing the consequences. While we are at it, why not freely expose our children to images of death, birth, seeing dead bodies, and miscarriages? Are any of the above Samoan traditions anything that we would want to adopt into our Western culture to benefit our lifestyles? Would the price we might have to pay to live in a way that looks on the surface to be stress free be too high? The Samoans’ relaxed and carefree lifestyle may seem like an ideal way of life, but a careful examination of the things we would have to change in order to obtain this “stress free” lifestyle shows that it is unlikely that the Samoan ways could be adopted successfully into our Western culture.

It is clear by observing the Samoan’s traditional treatment of young children that they do not want them standing out above anyone else. Thi

Some topics in this essay:
Margaret Mead, Samoan Western, Compared Samoan, Samoans Westerners, Cultures Samoan, western culture, view sex, western child, samoan adults, samoan western, six seven, aspects samoan life, age six seven, samoan life westerners, treat children, westerners adopt benefit, dead bodies, age six, children seen, life westerners adopt,