Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/270

 one wants to do; of work as the main business of adults, play as the main concern of children, are conspicuously absent. Children's play is like adults' play in kind, interest, and in its proportion to work. And the Samoan child has no desire to turn adult activities into play, to translate one sphere into the other. I had a box of white clay pipes for blowing soap bubbles sent me. The children were familiar with soap bubbles, but their native method of blowing them was very inferior to the use of clay pipes. But after a few minutes' delight in the unusual size and beauty of the soap bubbles, one little girl after another asked me if she might please take her pipe home to her mother, for pipes were meant to smoke, not to play with. Foreign dolls did not interest them, and they have no dolls of their own, although children of other islands weave dolls from the palm leaves from which Samoan children weave balls. They never make toy houses, nor play house, nor sail toy boats. Little boys would climb into a real outrigger canoe and practise paddling it within the safety of the lagoon. This whole attitude gave a greater coherence to the children's lives than we often afford our children.

The intelligibility of a child's life among us is measured only in terms of the behaviour of other children. If all the other children go to school the child who does not feels incongruous in their midst. If the little girl next door is taking music lessons, why can't Mary; or why must Mary take music lessons, if the other lit-