At the young age of 23, Margaret Mead left the comforts of her home on a journey to Samoa. During her time spent there she became one with the people, and focused on three families of three different tribes. She was partly concerned with observations of females from birth to post-pubescent stages of life. Mead focused much of her book on sex and sexuality as well as relations between the sexes. Along the way, she mentions ways that our Western culture and Samoan culture are similar and different having to do with child rearing, general behaviors of youths and adults, and sexual issues. Mead found the Samoan culture to contain much more freedom than our own culture. This freedom is what affects the lives of all the growing males and females, and begins immediately with birth. There is mention in the introduction of a scientific method approach to observation including the control of a certain factors when all others are the same. The people in Samoa and in our culture are biologically similar, while the ways of their lives are different. What makes the practices of humans of different cultures differ from each other? The attitudes about sex an

Children in the Samoan culture are reared very differently than in our own culture. When a Samoan child is born, their biological mother only gives them care until they no longer require her breast milk. After this time, they are passed on to what is referred to as a chief nurse maid. Usually the nurse maid will be at an age of about six or seven. If you stop to think about the six and seven year old children in our culture, you may immediately picture a group of first graders running around a classroom pasting things to the wall or throwing tantrums because someone has that nice red fire truck that they only want out of jealousy. For one of these children to take the responsibility for an infant would be out of the question. In our culture, we do not put responsibility on young children, because it is culturally accepted and learned that the children will inevitably fail and the mistake could be vital. We think that they will fail either from previous experience, or because we never raised our children to become the responsible people that the Samoan children have become. The girls of this age are also learning to take their role in society as a female. They are learning to weave, tidy up the house, and bring water from the sea, when they are not tending to the children. It is important for a girl to be a productive worker, as her reputation, and maybe her marriage will depend on her skills one day. Mead mentions that there are a few cases in which the boys will take care of children, but are usually relieved of their duties at an earlier age. “Where small girls are brusquely pushed aside, small boys are tolerated and become adept at making themselves useful” (Mead 2001; 20). The boys are given a chance probably based on their physical strength, which can be more productive to the community than the practice of child rearing or any of the other “girls’” tasks. The boys are taught early that they have the opportunity to play a higher, more prestigious role in the village than the girls.

The children that the nurse maids take care of are very rarely, if at all, disciplined by their mothers. Mead mentions that when a child is upset, or throwing a tantrum, the caregiver will often just remove the child from the mother, as not to disturb her. To say that the Samoan children are “free” as compared to the children of our culture would be a correct statement, until the child is of age to take on the burdens of child rearing, when they themselves are not completely learned of all the rules to follow. The fact that the children in Samoa aren’t disciplined as our young children is very functional to their way of life because the children are behaving somehow without the scolding. They are behaved because they really aren’t given a choice to do otherwise. Children in Samoa are almost forced into adulthood, though not biologically, through the way they are reared. This in turn sets them into a sexual life and a more adult life earlier than the lives of children in our culture. This aspect of their lives is part of the way that their sexuality is learned. Samoan youths are seen as more adult around the ages 12-14. This is the time period at which they experiment sexuall

Some topics in this essay:
Children Samoa, Samoans Mead, Children Samoan, Margaret Mead, American Samoan, samoan culture, Discussion Anthropology, own culture, samoan children, sexual relations, child rearing, children culture, culture samoan, mead 2001, opposite sex, adult life, culture samoan culture,