Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/322



This study included sixty-eight girls between the ages of eight and nine and nineteen or twenty—all the girls between these ages in the three villages of Faleasao, Lumā and Siufaga, the three villages on the west coast of the island of Taū in the Manu'a Archipelago of the Samoan Islands.

Owing to the impossibility of obtaining accurate dates of birth except in a very few cases, the ages must all be regarded as approximate. The approximations were based upon the few known ages and the testimony of relatives as to the relative age of the others. For purpose of description and analysis I have divided them roughly into three groups, the children who showed no mammary signs of puberty, twenty-eight in number, ranging in age from eight or nine to about twelve or thirteen; the children who would probably mature within the next year or year and a half, fourteen in number, ranging in age from twelve or thirteen to fourteen or fifteen; and the girls who were past puberty, but who were not yet considered as adults by the community, twenty-five in number, ranging in age from fourteen or fifteen to nineteen or twenty. These two latter groups and eleven of the younger children were studied in detail, making a group of fifty. The remaining fourteen children in the youngest group were studied less carefully as individuals. They formed a large check group in studying play, gang life, the development of brother and sister avoidance, the attitude between the sexes, the difference in the interests and activities of this age and the girls approaching puberty. They also provided abundant material for