Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/254

 differences of standard are not perpetuated through the children's adherence to the parents' position, nor are children thrown into bizarre, untypical attitudes which might form the basis for departure and change. It is possible that where our own culture is so charged with choice, it would be desirable to mitigate, at least in some slight measure, the strong rôle which parents play in children's lives, and so eliminate one of the most powerful accidental factors in the choices of any individual life.

The Samoan parent would reject as unseemly and odious an ethical plea made to a child in terms of personal affection. "Be good to please mother." "Go to church for father's sake." "Don't be so disagreeable to your sister, it makes father so unhappy." Where there is one standard of conduct and only one, such undignified confusion of ethics and affection is blessedly eliminated. But where there are many standards and all adults are striving desperately to bind their own children to the particular courses which they themselves have chosen, recourse is had to devious and non-reputable means. Beliefs, practices, courses of action, are pressed upon the child in the name of filial loyalty. In our ideal picture of the freedom of the individual and the dignity of human relations it is not pleasant to realise that we have developed a form of family organisation which often cripples the emotional life, and warps and confuses the growth of many individuals' power to consciously live their own lives.