Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/171

 night may have been spent in a room with ten other people will never the less shrink in shame from even touching hands in public. Individuals between whom there have been sex relations are said to be "shy of each other," and manifest this shyness in different fashion but with almost the same intensity as in the brother and sister avoidance. Husbands and wives never walk side by side through the village, for the husband, particularly, would be "ashamed." So no Samoan child is accustomed to seeing father and mother exchange casual caresses. The customary salutation by rubbing noses is, of course, as highly conventionalised and impersonal as our handshake. The only sort of demonstration which ever occurs in public is of the horseplay variety between young people whose affections are not really involved. This romping is particularly prevalent in groups of women, often taking the form of playfully snatching at the sex organs.

But the lack of privacy within the houses where mosquito netting marks off purely formal walls about the married couples, and the custom of young lovers of using the palm groves for their rendezvous, makes it inevitable that children should see intercourse, often and between many different people. In many cases they have not seen first intercourse, which is usually accompanied by greater shyness and precaution. With the passing of the public ceremony, defloration forms one of the few mysteries in a young Samoan's knowledge of life. But scouring the village palm groves in