Coming of age in Samoa

by Margaret Mead

Furthermore, the type of data which we needed is not of the sort which lends itself readily to quantitative treatment. The reaction of the girl to her stepmother, to relatives acting as foster parents, to her younger sister, or to her older brother,—these are incommensurable in quantitative terms. As the physician and the psychiatrist have found it necessary to describe each case separately and to use their cases as illumination of a thesis rather than as irrefutable proof such as it is possible to adduce in the physical sciences, so the student of the more intangible and psychological aspects of human behaviour is forced to illuminate rather than demonstrate a thesis. The composition of the background against which the girl acts can be described in accurate and general terms, but her reactions are a function of her own personality and cannot be described without reference to it. The generalisations are based upon a careful and detailed observation of a small group of subjects. These results will be illuminated and illustrated by case histories.

The conclusions are also all subject to the limitation of the personal equation. They are the judgments of one individual upon a mass of data, many of the most significant aspects of which can, by their very nature, be known only to herself. This was inevitable and it can only be claimed in extenuation that as the personal equation was held absolutely constant, the different parts of the data are strictly commensurable. The judgment on the reaction of Lola to her uncle and of Sona to her cousin are made on exactly the same basis.

Another methodological device which possibly needs explanation is the substitution of a cross sectional study for a linear one. Twenty-eight children who as yet showed no signs of puberty, fourteen children who would probably mature within the next year or year and a half, and twenty-five girls who had passed puberty within the last four years but were not yet classed by the community as adults, were studied in detail. Less intensive observations were also made upon the very little children and the young married women. This method of taking cross sections, samples of individuals at different periods of physical development, and arguing that a group in an earlier stage will later show the characteristics which appear in another group at a later stage, is, of course, inferior to a linear study in which the same group is under observation for a number of years. A very large number of cases has usually been the only acceptable defence of such a procedure. The number of cases included in this investigation, while very small in comparison with the numbers mustered by any student of American children, is nevertheless a fair-sized sample in terms of the very small population of Samoa (a rough eight thousand in all four islands of American Samoa) and because the only selection was geographical. It may further be argued that the almost drastic character of the conclusions, the exceedingly few exceptions which need to be made, further validate the size of the sample. The adoption of the cross section method was, of course, a matter of expediency, but the results when carefully derived from a fair sample, may be fairly compared with the results obtained by using the linear method, when the same subjects are under observation over a period of years. This is true when the conclusions to be drawn are general and not individual. For the purposes of psychological theory, it is sufficient to know that children in a certain society walk, on the average, at twelve months, and talk, on the average, at fifteen months. For the purposes of the diagnostician, it is necessary to know that John walked at eighteen months and did not talk until twenty months. So, for general theoretical purposes, it is enough to state that little girls just past puberty develop a shyness and lack of self-possession in the presence of boys, but if we are to understand the delinquency of Mala, it is necessary to know that she prefers the company of boys to that of girls and has done so for several years.

PARTICULAR METHODS USED

The description of the cultural background was obtained in orthodox fashion, first through interviews with carefully chosen informants, followed by checking up their statements with other informants and by the use of many examples and test cases. With a few unimportant exceptions this material was obtained in the Samoan language and not through the medium of interpreters. All of the work with individuals was done in the native language, as there were no young people on the island who spoke English.

Although a knowledge of the entire culture was essential for the accurate evaluation of any particular individual’s behaviour, a detailed description will be given only of those aspects of the culture which are immediately relevant to the problem of the adolescent girl. For example, if I observe Pele refuse point blank to carry a message to the house of a relative, it is important to know whether she is actuated by stubbornness, dislike of the relative, fear of the dark, or fear of the ghost which lives near by and has a habit of jumping on people’s backs. But to the reader a detailed exposition of the names and habits of all the local ghost population would be of little assistance in the appreciation of the main problem. So all descriptions of the culture which are not immediately relevant are omitted from the discussion but were not omitted from the original investigation. Their irrelevancy has, therefore, been definitely ascertained.

The knowledge of the general cultural pattern was supplemented by a detailed study of the social structure of the three villages under consideration. Each household was analysed from the standpoint of rank, wealth, location, contiguity to other households, relationship to other households, and the age, sex, relationship, marital status, number of children, former residence, etc., of each individual in the household. This material furnished a general descriptive basis for a further and more careful analysis of the households of the subjects, and also provided a check on the origin of feuds or alliances between individuals, the use of relationship terms, etc. Each child was thus studied against a background which was known in detail.

A further mass of detailed information was obtained about the subjects: approximate age (actual age can never be determined in Samoa), order of birth, numbers of brothers and sisters, who were older and younger than the subject, number of marriages of each parent, patrilocal and matrilocal residence, years spent in the pastor’s school and in the government school and achievement there, whether the child had ever been out of the village or off the island, sex experience, etc. The children were also given a makeshift intelligence test, colour-naming, rote memory, opposites, substitution, ball and field, and picture interpretation. These tests were all given in Samoan; standardisation was, of course, impossible and ages were known only relatively; they were mainly useful in assisting me in placing the child within her group, and have no value for comparative purposes. The results of the tests did indicate, however, a very low variability within the group. The tests were supplemented by a questionnaire which was not administered formally but filled in by random questioning from time to time. This questionnaire gave a measure of their industrial knowledge, the extent to which they participated in the lore of the community, of the degree to which they had absorbed European teaching in matters like telling time, reading the calendar, and also of the extent to which they had participated in or witnessed scenes of death, birth, miscarriage, etc.

But this quantitative data represents the barest skeleton of the material which was gathered through months of observation of the individuals and of groups, alone, in their households, and at play. From these observations, the bulk of the conclusions are drawn concerning the attitudes of the children towards their families and towards each other, their religious interests or the lack of them, and the details of their sex lives. This information cannot be reduced to tables or to statistical statements. Naturally in many cases it was not as full as in others. In some cases it was necessary to pursue a more extensive enquiry in order to understand some baffling aspect of the child’s behaviour. In all cases the investigation was pursued until I felt that I understood the girl’s motivation and the degree to which her family group and affiliation in her age group explained her attitudes.

The existence of the pastor’s boarding-school for girls past puberty provided me with a rough control group. These girls were so severely watched that heterosexual activities were impossible; they were grouped together with other girls of the same age regardless of relationship; they lived a more ordered and regular life than the girls who remained in their households. The ways in which they differed from other girls of the same age and more resembled European girls of the same age follow with surprising accuracy the lines suggested by the specific differences in environment. However, as they lived part of the time at home, the environmental break was not complete and their value as a control group is strictly limited.