Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/283

 And if the girl chooses the other course, decides to remain true to the tradition of the last generation, she wins the sympathy and support of her parents at the expense of the comradeship of her contemporaries. Whichever way the die falls, the choice is attended by mental anguish. Only occasional children escape by various sorts of luck, a large enough group who have the same standards so that they are supported either against their parents or against the majority of their age mates, or by absorption in some other interest. But, with the exception of students for whom the problem of personal relations is sometimes mercifully deferred for a later settlement, those who find some other interest so satifying that they take no interest in the other sex, often find themselves old maids without any opportunity to recoup their positions. The fear of spinsterhood is a fear which shadows the life of no primitive woman; it is another item of maladjustment which our civilisation has produced.

To the problem of present conduct are added all the perplexities introduced by varying concepts of marriage, the conflict between deferring marriage until a competence is assured, or marrying and sharing the expenses of the home with a struggling young husband. The knowledge of birth control, while greatly dignifying human life by introducing the clement of choice at the point where human beings have before been most abjectly subject to nature, introduces further perplexities. It complicates the issue from a straight