Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/200

 in the household of one native pastor, the three in the household of the other, were all, although past puberty, living continent lives, in strong contrast to the habits of the rest of their age mates.

It might seem that there was fertile material for conflict between parents who wished their children to live in the pastor's house and children who did not wish to do so, and also between children who wished it and parents who did not. This conflict was chiefly reduced by the fact that residence in the pastor's house actually made very little difference in the child's status in her own home. She simply carried her roll of mats, her pillow and her mosquito net from her home to the pastor's, and the food which she would have eaten at home was added to the quota of the food which her family furnished to the pastor. She ate her evening meal and slept at the pastor's; one or two days a week she devoted to working for the pastor's family, washing, weaving, weeding and sweeping the premises. The rest of her time she spent at home performing the usual tasks of a girl of her age, so that it was seldom that a parent objected strongly to sending a child to the pastor's. It involved no additional expense and was likely to reduce the chances of his daughter's conduct becoming embarrassing, to improve her mastery of the few foreign techniques, sewing, ironing, embroidery, which she could learn from the more skilled. and schooled pastor's wife and thus increase her economic value.