Thursday, March 3, 2011

Book Reading #31 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 10: The Experience and Individuality of the Average Girl
Summary
In this chapter Mead talks about what it is like for a girl growing up in a Samoan village. In particular, Mead talked about the particular group of girls (age 10 - 20) that she followed throughout many months. Samoan children are exposed to many difficult situations early on in life, however none of this seems to affect them as they grow older. A large part of this chapter is devoted to Samoan girl's habits about the subject of sex.

Discussion
This chapter was kind of interesting particularly in two ways: (1) It seems that adults in the village are not very concerned about what their kids learn in terms of life; that is, parents are more concerned about teaching the duties to their kids. This fact seems to expose kids to several complex experiences. However, maybe the casualty with which parents go about it serves as a neutralizer to this experiences. (2) The other interesting part about this chapter is the amount of sexual exposure among the kids of the village.

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