Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/69

 most pertinently the supply of agreeably docile subordinates. But the girls who remain unmarried even beyond their early twenties are in nowise less highly regarded or less responsible than their married sisters. This tendency to make the classifying principle age, rather than married state, is reinforced outside the home by the fact that the wives of untitled men and all unmarried girls past puberty are classed together in the ceremonial organisation of the village.

Relatives in other households also play a rôle in the children’s lives. Any older relative has a right to demand personal service from younger relatives, a right to criticise their conduct and to interfere in their affairs. Thus a little girl may escape alone down to the beach to bathe only to be met by an older cousin who sets her washing or caring for a baby or to fetch some cocoanut to scrub the clothes. So closely is the daily life bound up with this universal servitude and so numerous are the acknowledged relationships in the name of which service can be exacted, that for the children an hour’s escape from surveillance is almost impossible.

This loose but demanding relationship group has its compensations also. Within it a child of three can wander safely and come to no harm, can be sure of finding food and drink, a sheet to wrap herself up in for a nap, a kind hand to dry casual tears and bind up her wounds. Any small children who are missing when night falls, are simply “sought among their kinsfolk,” and a baby whose mother has gone inland to