5 stars for being a great well-written story. Took a star off for letting her prejudices get in way of her conclusions.
I am afraid that Ms. Mead was a better writer and teller of tales than anthropologist. Some sense of this is seen in just the subtitle for this book. If written as a dispassionate cultural study then why mention sex on on the title page. Also, a more even-handed writer would realize that Samoa was far from "primitive".
Yet her books are entertaining, influential and educational; just a bit flawed. ( )

Derek Freeman has given good evidence that parts of this Mead book was based on a joke of her two informers, and that she was naiv in believing their stories. This means that the book should be read with great care.

I had to read this book for a freshman year anthro class. It seemed really interesting and I was very intrigued, and then at the end of the class the prof told us that they basically have found that everything Margret Mead Found and wrote about was false. So now I don't know what to think. ( )

Publishing the 5th edition in 1973, Mead clearly spanned several generations in sharing her account of the last days of early Samoan culture. Already by the time she had arrived, Congregational missionaries were there sharing and imposing their beliefs and changing the micro-culture forever. Ms. Mead concentrated on the adolescent girls of Samoan society in order to compare them to America's then modern age of adolescence. Somoa maintained a much more open society of villages in which large family units shared the rearing of children in common. Young girls were first charged with watching younger siblings and then progressed to learning the various duties required of an adult. There was then a very free period during which teenage women enjoyed a free exploration of relationships, sometimes even resulting in attemps to prolong an expected marriage. Samoa clearly held a more open attitude toward everything -- the body, sexuality, privacy, and feelings. Mead notes contrasts as drivers of American youths' behavior and rebellion, arguing that modern society forces so many more serious and conflicting choices on young minds who have not even observed most of the important events of life. I cannot agree with the anthropologist's views that we should become more permissive with our children in letting them float freely to other homes and engage in serious physical relationships; indeed our society is not the simple society of Samoa nor is Samoa now the simple society it once was. ( )