In the 1980s, Derek Freeman contested many of Mead's claims, and argued that she was hoaxed into counterfactually believing that Samoan culture had more relaxed sexual norms than Western culture. It is a key text in the nature versus nurture debate, as well as in discussions on issues relating to family, adolescence, gender, social norms, and attitudes. The book has sparked years of ongoing and intense debate and controversy on questions pertaining to society, culture, and science. Since its first publication, Coming of Age in Samoa was the most widely read book in the field of anthropology until Napoleon Chagnon's Yanomamö: The Fierce People overtook it. The book details the sexual life of teenagers in Samoan society in the early 20th century, and theorizes that culture has a leading influence on psychosexual development.įirst published in 1928, the book launched Mead as a pioneering researcher and as the most famous anthropologist in the world. After they reached years of discretion, nine or ten years of age in this case, they may not touch each other, sit close together, eat together, address each other familiarly, or mention any salacious matter in each other's presence.' A Samoan village is made up of some thirty or forty households The first baby must always be born in the mother's village and if she has gone to live in the village of her husband, she must go home for the occasion After weaning babies are usually handed over to the care of some younger girl in the household.Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation is a 1928 book by American anthropologist Margaret Mead based upon her research and study of youth – primarily adolescent girls – on the island of Taʻū in the Samoan Islands. Relatives of opposite sex have 'a most rigid code of etiquette prescribed for all their contacts with each other. What is the taupo? the ceremonial princess of the house, named by a high chief in each village at about fifteen or sixteen. a headman who presides over a household and exercises nominal and usually real authority over every individual under his protection, even over his father and mother.

Who gives disciplinary authority within the household? 'age rather than relationship' The matai.

Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead