Has anyone read Margaret Mead?

[BritBratGrot]

Specifically Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World

It's on my dad's Christmas list and I'm ashamed to say I've never heard of her. I was amused to see it's written in 1949, so the changing world to which she refers is very much a precursor to the world we're in now.

Just wondering if anyone here has read it? I'm planning to buy a copy and read it before I wrap it for my dad. He's most definitely GC and is newly retired and trying to read lots of seminal works on all sorts of topics, focusing on hot topics in the current time. I'm intrigued to learn more about how these isolated tribal communities view sex roles compared to early 20th century US, where i assume they were at the height of their gender stereotyping setting rigid behavioural models for people to follow.

Fully open to finding out in completely wrong on many of my assumptions, and very much hoping I won't be eyerolling throughout.

Early 20th Century USA women may seem old fashioned to us now but they were breaking away from what had gone before.

Even today you will find that American women seem particularly outspoken, bold and demanding of what they want compared to European women. Their grandmothers were super strong pioneers and survivors one way or another and extremely important to the survival of their families through all sorts of difficulties.

Haven’t read but am intrigued to hear what others think. I copied this from a different thread on here, (apologies, can’t remember which thread!) which made me think she’s definitely an old-school feminist:

“Margaret Mead was an early 20th century anthropologist who studied small tribal villages in southern Africa.

She discovered two villages around 10-20 miles from each other, both of which had knitting cultures. In one village, knitting was women's work and was felt to be necessary for garment making for the villagers. It was disdained by men who refused to have anything to do with it except wearing the garments (and presumably whingeing if there was anything wrong with them).

In the other village, knitting was solely done by men. It was considered almost holy and precious and women were not allowed anywhere near the knitting, particularly if they were menstruating. Possibly they weren't even allowed to wear the garments.

Mead concluded that in both cultures, it wasn't about the knitting, but about the knitters, and male knitters were more revered than female ones.”

Same task, but when the women do it, it’s ignored, when the men do it, it’s holy.

Now I’ve made myself curious all over again.

Your dad sounds great!

That is amazing evidence, and actually very funny, if it weren’t so clearly carrying the truth that when women do it, it doesn’t count for much.

Definitely not southern Africa, she worked in Asia. Maybe an AI fail?

As I say, I haven’t read her work, and copied that verbatim from a completely different thread. Have you read her work? Would love to hear more about it.

I believe her research has been disputed in later years. She did not speak the language and misinterpreted what she saw.

This was me!

Margaret Mead was brilliant.

A little old fashioned probably but her ideas are mostly drawn from observations and therefore very useful by today's standards.

Not an AI fail, my poor memory. I read it in the 1990s.

Oh yay - I was hoping whoever I had copied that from would pop up and identify themselves! Thank you @MyrtleLion!

I've read Coming of Age in Samoa which was her first book and the one which received the criticism. The debate is still raging and there are whole books written about the dispute between her and Freeman, whose work, and particularly his critique of Mead, have also been heavily criticised.

Her main conclusion in that book was that children in Samoa didn't have an angst-filled adolescence like American children because they didn't have many choices - they just grew into the small number of quite rigid roles expected of them without thinking about it too much.

I found it an engaging read, not dry and academic.

I'd like to read more of her work, the titles alone sound like they'd be really interesting, although according to Betty Friedan her later works suffer from the influence of freudianism.

Don’t know much about her but I think that some of her work fed into the cultural changes and sexual revolution that happened in the 1960s.

The style of the book may be a bit outdated but I would expect that the ideas may still be interesting. I do think she was considered ahead of her time in her attitudes to sex.

She was influential to 70s feminism. As it is possible to read her observations and not slavishly follow her interpretation.

And by raising questions about assumed inate roles etc., it was (is?) part of challenging male presumptions.

I saw this article, which I haven't read, but shows that she was influential in many ways, even if not one your dad might be interested in!

Margaret Mead Made Me Gay
https://sfonline.barnard.edu/introduction-tomargaret-mead-made-me-gay/

She sounds like the same generation as Betty Friedan who wrote the Problem that Has No Name, that many, many women responded to. It captured the dissatisfaction and depressing that many women in the west who ironically had a more liberated life during WWII but were then forced back into the home. A period that far from being happy home makers baking and sewing led to one the highest rates of women suffering breakdowns.

It was very influential in setting the grounds of what became the Women's Liberation Movement that she herself was not comfortable with.

And Margaret Mead has been accused of looking at other groups of people through the lens of white western values.

Your dad sounds wonderful!

I read Margaret Mead while at uni and thought she wrote really well. I seem to remember there was some issue with her research methods but did find her ideas really interesting. Her ethnographies had an impact because they suggested that roles vary in societies and aren't necessarily fixed or specific to gender but are more fluid. She considers whether culture shapes human behaviour as much as/more than biology. You've made me want to go and dig out my copies of her writing from the book pile - whether you agree with her ideas or not, her writing is always engaging.

Yes I read her work around child development / how they learn and roles of parent figures when at Uni. Can't recall many details but I remember thinking she was sensible and easy to read, quoting her in essays, and when I saw her name in your post I felt favourably.
Probably a bit vaguer than you wanted OP. Magpie is much clearer!

Pacific, I think. I read Growing up in Samoa when I was at uni. Can't remember much except that when a couple married the husband's 'talking chief' (no idea what this was now) had sex with the bride before the husband. I suspect that Mead's almost reverential treatment of indigenous cultures would now be found patronising by the progressives and niaive by those who follow Mr Hobbes in believing that a state of nature is nasty, brutish and short.
Good point about US women being more upfront with demands than European women. My several times great-aunt, who was on the trek to Utah, wrote a scathing denunciation of Mormon polygamy which is still in print - she was not backward in coming forward at all.

Your post reminds me of a book that a friend sent me. The Miseducation of Women by James Tooley. I haven't got very far into it yet but he has actually worked in different cultures and discusses different feminisms. The book is from 2001 and I am looking forward to seeing his more recent thoughts. Have a look, you may find it will also be of interest to your dad.