Margaret Mead:Her Life and the Psychology of Women
...plete by adding an additional perspective (Grinager, 1999, p. 54). Research/Lifework “Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.” –Margaret Mead (1995, p. 20) In Mead’s career as an anthropologist most of her research and conclusions were centered on the area of adolescent girls’ experiences and gender differences found in Pacific cultures compared to our own North American Culture. The majority of Mead’s research asserted one central idea, as the quote above does, that culture continually changes, and constantly changes male and female roles in society. Being an anthropologist, Mead’s research was largely dependent on ethnography. Ethnography is the study of a culture by immersing oneself into the particular cultural entirely, often referred to as the participant observer method. This means Mead would observe the culture she was studying by living with them, speaking with them, following the rules of their cultures, watching their interactions amongst each other, and most of all listening to what they had to say The first and most influential experience Mead had in ethnographic research is, as mentioned previously, the field study she completed in America Samoa for her graduate program. With the urging of her professor Franz Boas at Columbia University Margaret traveled to Samoa in August of 1925 to study the research question: Do teenagers experience the same problems around the world or do they behave differently in different societies (Mead, 1973, p.114)? In particular she was focusing on the experiences of 50 adolescent girls from three different villages in Samoa. However, important was the fact that finally a woman anthropologist was studying women, who at that time were largely absent or presented in a biased fashion amongst anthropological research. As Howard (1984) commented in her biography on Mead, “Owning to the paucity of women ethnologists, practically no ethological work has been done among women as such, and this investigation offers a particularly rich field for the study of feminine reactions and participation in the culture of the group” (p. 76). Mead’s findings were published in 1929 in Coming of Age in Samoa which generally stated that Samoan adolescents made an easy transition to adulthood showing little of the difficulties typically associated with Westernized adolescence (Mead, 1973, p. 3). With this publication Mead helped the field of anthropology become mainstream and Saunders (1987) recorded that it was praised by men, women, anthropologists, writers, and journalists as it made its way onto the best sellers list (p. 38). However, this primary work also garnered criticism from other anthropologists studying the Pacific Island culture. One of the most visible critics, Derek Freeman, refuted conclusions made in Coming of Age in Samoa in his published works Margaret Mead and Samoa and Margaret Mead and the Heretic. In these works Freeman (1994) argues that the inferences Mead claimed were based on jokes told by Samoan girls in the study, biases of her expectations for returning an acceptable answer to Boas, a “sheltered ethnography” because she did not live with the people she study, and a general misunderstanding in her subjects due to her minimal comprehension of the Samoan language (p. 117). Despite these criticisms Mead’s Coming of Age is still regarded as major anthropological discovery and held in esteem for its feminist perspective regarding women and their experiences in culture. Dealing more with psychology of women issues, Mead’s next work analyzed the differences in sex between seven tribes on the Pacific island of Bali. Here she looked at natural temperaments (aggressive/passive) in relation to the sex. She found that in some tribes the men were aggressive and the women passive, in others women were aggressive and men were passive, and still in others both men and women were either passive or aggressive. This led her to comment as cited in Cassidy’s (1982) biography, that “many, if not all, of the personality traits which we have called masculine or feminine are as lightly linked with sex as are the clothing, the manners, and the form of head-dress that a society at a given period assigns to either sex” (p. 38). Mead suggested three options society could take with this new information, it could one require strict gender roles, secondly it could block out all sexual differences, or finally a society could approach the sexes as one with compromises and no set pattern is “right” for any human being (Mead, 1980, p. 230). Again Mead’s published work of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies classifying her research in Bali was highly recommended by some and highly criticized by others. The feminist group in particular identified with Mead’s findings of sex difference coupled to cultural learning and not biological linkages. The opinions shared in this 1935 work asserting that culture plays the primary role in gendered behavior predated modern feminist ideas by at least two decades. On the other hand critics such as Goldberg (1991) rejected the idea of feminist anthropology claiming that it was an empty discussion, where science was discussed in the results frequently, but not much actual science was ever done to show significant results (p.32). Psychology of Women Issues Seen through Mead’s childhood, moving onto her earlier research in Samoa, and then her later research completed in Bali, one recognizes that Mead has dealt with several psychology of women issues in her personal and professional life. The first issue prompting discussion is Mead’s early family life and its influence on her future. In the text Psychology of Women, Margaret Matlin addresses the importance the family plays in gender typing and career aspirations of young women. Matlin (2000) permits parents can encourage or discourage gender-typed activities, conversational patterns, and household chores (p.104). In this section Matlin (2000) suggests the more encouragement or discouragement towards gender-typing that occurs in a family reflects the degree to which children hold traditional gender stereotypes (p. 97). This discussion of family applies to Mead because her mother, father, and grandmother did not introduce any stereotypical gender-typing to the children. Mead grew up in a family that placed little emphasis on traditional gender roles where she was expected to be proficient in mathematics, literature, household chores, and physical activities. As Mead (1972) comments in Blackberry Winter, “I always felt that I was special and different, set apart in a way that could not be attributed to any gift I had, but only to my background—the education given to me my grandmother and to the explicit academic interests of my parents” (p. 125). Because Mead’s family neither encouraged nor discouraged certain gender activities, Mead was able to participate and feel accomplished in both typically masculine and feminine behaviors and activities. Another section of women’s psychology that Mead was affected by directly was that of career aspirations and motivation to reach for a certain career. Our text explains in some detail how women’s career aspirations toward non-traditional careers can be affected by achievement and experiences in high school and higher education (Matlin, 2000, p. 147). Mead’s own career field choices in anthropology, focusing on with women’s studies, was chosen on the basis she did not like the competitive and contradictive environment found within male domains. In male dominated fields, especially in college at DePauw, she found herself being looked at as unattractive when she succeeded, and did not want to lower her standards in order to become more appealing to men. (Cassidy, 1982, p. 103). In response to this double standard, Mead (1972) recorded that her anthropological field choices were chosen not so that she would compete men in male fields, but rather concentrate on work that is better done by women (p. 137). Psychological issues that affected Mead are reflected in the decisions she made in life, but it can also be seen through her work as an anthropologist. Many of Mead’s studies were based around women, and her results often resembled a feminist approach. When one looks back on Mead’s work today they most often remember her for bringing a liberal feminis...