Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/276

 the part of the country in which they live, their skill with their hands, will combine to dictate choice perhaps between the job of cash girl in a department store or of telephone operator, or of clerk or miner. But small as is the number of choices open to them in actuality, the significance of this narrow field of opportunity is blurred by our American theory of endless possibilities. Moving picture, magazine, newspaper, all reiterate the Cinderella story in one form or another, and often the interest lies as much in the way cash girl 456 becomes head buyer as in her subsequent nuptials with the owner of the store. Our occupational classes are not fixed. So many children are better educated and hold more skilled positions than their parents that even the ever-present discrepancy between opportunities open to men and opportunities open to women, although present in a girl's competition with her brother, is often absent as between her unskilled father and herself. It is needless to argue that these attitudes are products of conditions which no longer exist, particularly the presence of a frontier and a large amount of free land which provided a perpetual alternative of occupational choice. A set which was given to our thinking in pioneer days is preserved in other terms. As long as we have immigrants from non-English-speaking countries, the gap in opportunities between non-English-speaking parents and English-speaking children will be vivid and dramatic. Until our standard of education becomes far more stable than it is at present, the continual raising