Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/226

 the status of a young man to the status of a matai is easier, he ages more quickly; although he may earn great respect in his adopted village, he commands less of its affection.

In most marriages there is no sense of setting up a new and separate establishment. The change is felt in the change of residence for either husband or wife and in the reciprocal relations which spring up between the two families. But the young couple live in the main household, simply receiving a bamboo pillow, a mosquito net and a pile of mats for their bed. Only for the chief or the chief's son is a new house built. The wife works with all the women of the household and waits upon all the men. The husband shares the enterprises of the other men and boys. Neither in personal service given or received are the two marked off as a unit. Nor does marriage of either brother or sister slacken the avoidance rules; it merely adds another individual, the new sister or brother-in-law, to whom the whole series of avoidances must be applied. In the sexual relation alone are the two treated as one. For even in the care of the young children and in the decisions as to their future, the uncles and aunts and grandparents participate as fully as the parents. It is only when a man is matai as well as father, that he has control over his own children; and when this is so, the relationship is blurred in opposite fashion, for he has the same control over many other young people who are less closely related to him.