Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/97

 women of their family, learn to bear the suffix, meaning "little" dropped from the "little girl" which had formerly described them. But they never again amalgamate into such free and easy groups as the before-the-teens gang. As sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls, they will still rely upon relatives, and the picture is groupings of twos or of threes, never more. The neighbourhood feelings drop out and girls of seventeen will ignore a near neighbour who is an age mate and go the length of the village to visit a relative. Relationship and similar sex interests are now the deciding factor in friendships. Girls also followed passively the stronger allegiance of the boys. If a girl's sweetheart has a chum who is interested in a cousin of hers, the girls strike up a lively, but temporary, friendship. Occasionally such friendships even go outside of the relationship group.

Although girls may confide only in one or two girl relatives, their sex status is usually sensed by the other women of the village and alliances shift and change on this basis, from the shy adolescent who is suspicious of all older girls, to the girl whose first or second love affair still looms as very important, to the girls who are beginning to centre all their attention upon one boy and possibly matrimony. Finally the unmarried mother selects her friends, when possible, from those in like case with herself, or from women of ambiguous marital position, deserted or discredited young wives.

Very few friendships of younger for older girls cut