September 2, 2015 • 44 mins
Nicknamed Mother to the World, Margaret Mead was an icon of cultural anthropology who laid an academic foundation for the sexual revolution and second wave feminism. Cristen and Caroline explore Margaret Mead's fascinating backstory, love life and intellectual legacy.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from How Supports Nott.
Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and
I'm Caroline. And today we're talking about the Mother of
the World. Not Gaya. Oh, not not the character from
(00:23):
Captain Planet. No. No, we're talking about cultural anthropologist Margaret
Mead and Caroline. Of course we both knew who Margaret
Mead was, and she's one of the most important women
of the twentieth century, one of the most important academics
and thinkers and speakers. But I didn't know that much
(00:46):
about her, you know, and really her impact. Yeah, I
had no idea either how far reaching her impact was,
both in terms of sexuality. She fixed a lot on sexuality,
but also gender roles and the way that Western society
maybe doesn't do it right in terms of raising their adolescence. Yeah,
(01:11):
and there were and are still academics who raise an
eyebrow at her methodology and the way she approached her
studies and then applied them to social issues of the time.
But in terms of women trailblazers and who I mean
(01:32):
she she was one of those people who just seemed
so singularly focused on her place in the world and
so unconcerned with what other people thought about her. Oh yeah,
I mean she pursued with the greatest thirst knowledge about
everything around her. And I mean, as we'll talk about that,
(01:52):
that's essentially how she was raised. She was raised to
just watch and observe and take notes on the world
around her. And Caroline she fascinates me down to her
signature wardrobe because she not only had this sort of
signature bob haircut that she wore, but she also always
wore a cape and walked with a stick, a forked
(02:13):
stick because she like twisted her ankle I think when
she was not that old and just like kept walking
with it. And in nineteen sixty nine, Time magazine described
her as quote looking like a cross between a stern
schoolmarm and an impish which which is fantastic. Yeah, it's
(02:35):
so funny. If that were anyone else, I would think
that was a negative description, But I mean, I think
she's so fantastic. And I don't know what Time meant
necessarily with that tone, but she is great and she
had an incredible look to her which was just as
unique as she herself was. And one of her most
famous quotes that does reflect her worldview in a lot
(02:56):
of ways is very much kindred to stuff Mom never
told you's ethos. So she once said, never doubt that
a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Um.
So who was she though we mentioned anthropology, So she was, yes,
an anthropologist. She was a leading academic of her day,
(03:18):
male or female. She did not like being described as
a leading female thinker because she was, I mean, among
the best. And she was an intellectual instigator of the
sexual revolution and also second wave feminism. Yeah, and she
sought to apply her background and focus in anthropology and
social science to solving issues like childhood education and also
(03:43):
mental health. Not everybody loved her. There were certainly people
who took issue with her from her own time up
to now, and who have tried very hard to discredit
her and her research. But she has contributed a lot
who are understanding of other cultures, are understanding that the
(04:04):
West is not the best, that different cultures can be
equally as great, but just different. Yeah, And looking back
at everything that she did, especially in the second half
of her life, she just comes across as so endlessly curious,
constantly absorbing new knowledge and then spreading it. Back out
(04:26):
into the world. So The New York Times noted in
her obituary that the American Natural History Museum once listed
her specialties as quote, education and culture, relationships between character,
structure and social forms, personality and culture, cultural aspects of
problems of nutrition, mental health, family life, ecology, atistics, transnational relations,
(04:49):
national character, cultural change, and culture building. So I mean,
not not much. Just yeah, just a cursory knowledge of
a couple of things. Yeah, I love it. Becau has
the descriptions of her It's often mentioned just how often
she lectured. She would deliver a ton of lectures every year,
and they were always on wildly different topics. And there
(05:12):
was even a quirky note I think was in her
New York Times obituary that she delivered so many lectures
so often and was also just so well versed in
so many diverse topics that she might show up at
like a men's luncheon or something and talk about the
sexual habits of a certain culture. She would get some
of her topics mixed up just because she was like,
(05:34):
I'm on a train and are a plane to some
other city. Now, oh yeah, she delivered the sexuality talk
to like a clergy group. I got it mixed up.
But she would even lecture on like very esoteric subjects
about the particular linguistics of the small cultural group in
(05:54):
the South Pacific. But she could go on and on
and on and was very engaging. Yea some he was
saying that, Oh, they raised a hand and asked a
question about this one group's use of a certain type
of nut in their in their diet. And she talked
about it at such length that you would have thought
that that was her main academic focus in life. I mean,
t ld R. I'm jealous of Margaret Mead's brain period.
(06:18):
And she was also astoundingly prolific. She wrote over twenty books,
co authored even more, and some of the titles include
Coming of Age in Samoa, which is probably her most
famous book. She also wrote in ve Sex and Temperament
in Three Primitive Societies, which we'll talk about more. She
(06:42):
also wrote in ninety nine Male and Female, a study
of the sexes in a Changing World, which Betty for
Dan would have a thing or two to say about.
And then in nineteen seventy two her autobiography was BlackBerry Winter. Yeah,
so poetic, but herself was very poetics some of the
first stuff, some of the first writing that she published
(07:04):
was literally poetry. I mean, she was she could do
it all, and so much of that is because of
her incredible background well in Caroline. Speaking of poetry, I
think it's time to let our listeners know about where
she came from. So in West Philadelphia, and I did
(07:26):
know one there were some Quaker parents having some fun.
And that's all we've got, listeners, But we've got really
excited when we realized that we could do the Fresh
Prince theme for just the first half line of her bio. Yeah,
so she knows she literally was born in Philadelphia to
Quaker parents. And side note, I mean I might go
back to this after we get out of the studio
(07:46):
and really try to flesh it out. So listeners, if
you if you'd like me to do some old school
women's history raps. Oh they do, let us know. I
can hear them screaming, Yes, she was born, like you
said to Quaker parents were also social scientists. Her dad,
Edward was an economist and Emily was a social reformer
(08:09):
and suffragists. And she was really a true child of
the progressive era. And she was the oldest of five
although one of her sisters, Catherine, died at nine months,
which was really devastating for her because she actually named
that baby. Yeah, I side out love the Quakers. I
told Kristin this, and she gave me a look like,
what are you talking about? I didn't know this about you. Yeah,
(08:31):
I love the Quakers because A I do have a
lot of Quakers in my ancestry. B b oat mail,
which I just can't like oat me. I'm sorry, but see, um,
the Quakers are just an incredible force in American history.
And I in fascinated by how so many of our
early abolitionists and feminists and suffragists came out of the
(08:55):
abolition movement, and so here we have. I was so
delighted to see that she also came out of this tradition.
And anyway, I think her family dynamics are fascinating too
and so sweet. For instance, her dad nicknamed her Punk,
and when her little brother Richard came along, she became
the original Punk, not girl punk. He in fact, was
(09:18):
called the boy Punk. Yeah. And and about that, Mead
wrote quote a reversal of the usual pattern, according to
which the girl is only a female version of the
true human being. The boy, which sounds a lot like
what we've talked about on the podcast before in terms
of the male being the kind of the baseline normal.
(09:39):
But here's the thing, though, her dad super cute that
he called her the original punk, but he was still
a man of his generation as well. He once commented
that it was too bad that she was a girl
because he had really had high hopes to, you know,
have a really impressive child. Um. But you know, she
(10:01):
would go on to prove him wrong in that regard, yeah, exactly.
And helping in that early development was her dad's mother,
Martha Adeline Ramsey Mead, who helped raise her while her
mom pursued her own studies and research. And her grandmother
sounds like a fascinating character because she thought that being
cooped up indoors was terrible and she had the kids
(10:24):
go out a lot and observe the outdoors, observed nature.
And so this was also a true part of the
progressive era about worrying about urban children being locked up
inside for too long and being separate from nature. And
while Margaret and her siblings formal education was a little
bit spotty, they only went to school occasionally, uh they
(10:49):
did rely on Martha, their grandmother, and local artists to
instruct the kids in everything from writing and observation and
research to art sculpture drawing. I mean, these were pretty
well rounded kids. And one thing that her mom and
(11:09):
grandmother both tasked Margaret with doing was taking notes on
her siblings development, because they were all about notes that
like tracking, you know, what time they were feeding, how
they were sleeping, what they were doing. And this really
laid the foundation for future anthropological research. I mean, all
(11:30):
the field notes that Margaret would take throughout her professional life,
and the Library of Congress has a lot of these
childhood notes, and I thought it was so funny that.
I Mean, part of the reason why she also took
notes was because the family moved a lot, apparently, so
she would write down addresses and sort of like who
was around and where they were to keep up with
all of that. But when it came to just keeping
(11:52):
a personal diary, she wasn't as great at it. But
when it came to just you know, taking being tabs
on how her siblings diets were progressing, she was great well.
And and that's something that her mother had done too.
When she was pregnant with Margaret She tracked everything that
she felt an experienced while she was pregnant, and then
(12:14):
that continued after Margaret was born. She would keep notes
on how her daughter was developing. So this is definitely
a family of social scientists. So in ninety Margaret has
already started college. She started out at DePaul University, didn't
really like it and transfers to Barnard and she skips
around a little bit. She starts off as an English
(12:36):
major and then goes into psychology and then ends up
in anthropology after taking a class with Franz Boas, who's
considered the father of anthropology and thankfully and also delightfully
a critic of social Darwinism and eugenics, so which was
surprisingly rare for a guy like that at the time. Yeah,
(12:57):
super rare in that era. Yeah, eugenics was horrifyingly popular.
Yeah for sure. Um. But boas Is research assistant was
a woman named Ruth Benedict, and they really together, Boas
and Benedict lit a fire in need not only just
for anthropology, but to document remote cultures that hadn't been
(13:20):
touched by industrialization. Um. And because you know, the ideas,
you know, westernization comes along and kind of just destroys
cultures and it's wake. And so she ends up studying
under Boas for her master's and PhD at Columbia, and Boas,
being her mentor, thought that Mead should study Native American adolescents,
(13:43):
but Mead was like, sorry, I've got this whole thing
of like traveling my own path and doing what I want.
So she ends up going to Polynesia and she focuses
on Samoan culture. So over nine thirty nine she studied
seven cultures around Polynesia and Indonesia, focusing especially on how
(14:04):
culture shaped adolescent development. And out of this some of
our earliest ideas about this whole thing we talked about
all the time on stuff I've never told you called
gender roles. Delicious, delicious, tasty, piping hot gender roles comes
out of this, and need was especially interested to find
(14:26):
out whether the pain of adolescence, and especially female adolescents,
was nature or nurture. So in she publishes this little
book you might have heard of, called Coming of Age
in Samoa, and for the most part it is your
basic field study of these young Samoans and how they're
(14:50):
growing up. But there I think it's like two chapters
where she really focuses in on sexuality, and she came
to a pretty radical conclusion, right, Yeah, she freaked everybody
out because she said that, hey, your adolescence doesn't have
to be this period of neuroticism. You don't have to
be so worried about everything and so repressed. And she
(15:11):
says that, look, look at these Samoan girls. They're having
a great time and adolescents and they're not dealing with
the neuroticism of American youth because they're not as bound
to restrictive gender roles as American girls are. But also
the idea that pre marital sex and extramarital sex wasn't
a huge deal. Adolescents were permitted to experiment, so to speak,
(15:35):
but not so much experimenting and like getting freaky, just
like allowing themselves to explore their developing sexuality, yeah, without
that risk of slut shaming. And she really painted that
idea of exploration versus repression as a part of healthy development.
And this book was hugely popular and really put her
(15:57):
on the map. But as we'll get into a little
bit later, the fanfare wouldn't always be so favorable. Um,
but she continues her work. I mean she this book
Coming of Agents Samoa was more of the layman's guide
to this. She would also come back and write a
more academic take on the whole experience. I mean she's
continually traveling and doing these this field research um. So
(16:21):
in ninety five, for instance, she really begins digging into
nature versus nurture when it comes to gender roles and
temperament for what would become the book Sex and Temperament,
which was based on field studies in Papua New Guinea. Yeah,
and in her work, she broke ground by separating the
(16:41):
ideas of biological sex from culturally constructed gender differences. So
drawing that line between hey, gender is almost inflicted on us,
whereas sex is the more biological component, and you can
see the groundwork being laid of her cultural determinism. That
would attract criticism because she really really really clung onto
(17:05):
this idea and promoted this idea that it's not so
much in a differences between men and women, but rather
culture's role in shaping these gender roles that separate us. Right,
one of the big things that she points out is like, hey,
when you look at different cultures and you see that
in one culture, men are responsible for this thing, and
another culture the woman is responsible for the thing. But
(17:27):
in the culture where the man is responsible for it,
that thing, whatever it is, is viewed more highly because
the man is doing it. And she said that that's
the kind of thing that she found to be true
across cultures, not necessarily the actual gender roles that were
being filled, so like, whether it was the hunting or
the cooking, or the protecting of the village or whatever,
(17:50):
it was the simple fact that when a man does it,
it does tend to be more highly valued. Yeah, And
and in doing so, she's also laying the groundwork for
the second way feminism. Not to get ahead of ourselves,
but I mean, think about this. This is going on
and coming out in the popular press in the nineteen thirties,
(18:13):
you know, Like I mean, I can only imagine the
reception at the time of someone suggesting this in the
United States, when gender roles are still just so so
very restricted. Because this is also the same time that
Indiana Jones has gone about doing his thing, you know,
And so I bet he probably wasn't necessarily on board
(18:33):
with everything she had to say. Do you think they
have a cross paths? I don't know. I mean maybe
I feel like he was more in like Germany and
in the Middle East. Well, speaking of Germany. UM, So
world War two happens. Like by this point though World
War Two, she's already gone to Bali and lived there
with her third husband, and they completed this massive visual
(18:58):
anthropological cole i s of over thirty five thousand photos
and film strips, which was unprecedented at the time. But
because of World War Two, access to the South Pacific
is closed off. So Need and Ruth Benedict, that former
research assistant of Franz Boas, found the Institute for Intercultural Studies.
(19:21):
And it's also around this time that her field work
in those distant cultures begins tapering off. And this is
also a point to note that we are going through
her biography with a broad brush just because she did
so much um but with World War Two, her focus
and her work really does shift more state side. Yeah.
(19:42):
And so after the war she does return to Manus
Island and Papua New Guinea to study the impact of
people's exposure to the wider world thanks to warfare, and
this trip ends up informing her beliefs in culture shaping
societal ills like racism and environmental mistreatment. It and it
ultimately prompts her famous quote that Kristen said about never
(20:05):
doubting that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world, and in this case it's for better
or for worse. So in addition to founding the Institute
for Intercultural Studies and being a university lecturer, she she
also became a curator for the American Natural History Museum
and a very busy public speaker. Like we mentioned earlier,
(20:28):
um and she would speak at venues like museum talks,
but also congressional hearings, late night talk shows U N summits.
She had regular magazine columns in places like read Book
and more so her voice was everywhere right. And I
think it is because of stuff like that that she
is such a huge figure. I mean, obviously she contributed
(20:51):
so much to academian, to our understanding of other cultures
and sexuality, amongst so many other topics. But it is
the fact that she was so accessible that helped. I mean,
her books are very readable, and I know that sounds
silly to say about a book, but I mean that's
a big deal when you're coming from like an academic perspective,
(21:11):
she was in incredibly readable, very accessible, and so here's
a woman that you might have delivering a speech in
a very academic setting, but you're also reading her column
and read book like my mom reads read book, you know.
I mean, it allowed a huge swath of the population
to become familiar with her and her ideas, right because
(21:32):
in a lot of ways, her field studies really fostered
what would become activism. Um in nineties six though, she
died from cancer, and she was posthumously awarded the Presidential
Medal Medal of Freedom in nineteen among so many other
(21:52):
accolades that she would garner over the years. She was
also elected president of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, which was a huge deal because I want
to say she was only the second woman to ever
be in that position. And also during her tenure she
did a lot in terms of enacting policies to be
(22:14):
more accepting of women and people who were not straight
white men. We've talked a lot already about her role
in the development of second way feminism and in changing
attitudes towards sex and sexuality. And you better believe that
we're going to tell you a lot more about that
after a quick break. So, despite the fact that Margaret
(22:46):
Meade's own mother had been a suffragist, Mead herself did
not self label as a feminist, And like Kristen said,
if you called her a female scientist or a female
this or that, she was it down with the descriptors.
She just wanted to be known and appreciated for her
work itself. But that work did intersect with the whole
(23:08):
idea behind Second Way feminism, since her research focused on
how culture shapes gender roles. Yeah. So in nine the
publication of Male and Female, a Study of the Sexes
in a Changing World, was pretty groundbreaking. The New York Times,
for instance, hailed quote Dr Mead's book has come to
(23:30):
grips with a cold war between the sexes and has
shown the basis of a lasting sexual piece. So, as
we've mentioned a number of times now, she really was
laying the foundation for all the conversations that we have
today in terms of gender constructs and roles and what
that really means and how they play out. Um Now. Interestingly, though,
(23:51):
Betty for Dan, author of The Feminine Mystique, would later
criticize her essentialist portrait of motherhood in a book Male
and Female, because I mean there were there were some
quotes that could raise eyebrows, such as quote, differences insects
as they're known today are based on the bringing up
(24:12):
by the mother. She's always pushing the female towards similarity,
in the male toward difference. So I could see how
for Dan might say, hey, that's an unfair generalization. Although
for Dan considered herself an heir to Margaret Mead's research
and legacy. Right, Yeah, there was a quote about how
(24:33):
she had done her part to further feminism or she
had taken feminism as far as she could, and so
for Dan saw herself as the heir to Mead's work,
which I think is funny. But she's putting that on herself. Yeah,
I mean, that's that's quite a statement to make. Um.
And and unfortunately Margaret Meade, you know, didn't live long
(24:55):
enough to really be able to respond. Um. But even
though me didn't directly identify as a feminist, which some
think rooted back to her childhood rebellion against her mother,
she definitely got it. I mean, she publicly dismantled the
idea that feminists have penis envior just want to be men,
(25:19):
but rather that we were striving to access cultural privileges
exclusively offered or at least made far more accessible to men.
And she understood conflicting demands to be a homemaker, child reader,
and income earner, and would encourage social networks and support
for working moms. I mean, and she really did, especially
later in her life, become very outspoken about gender equality
(25:44):
and women's rights. Yeah, and in terms of the sexual revolution,
though it's not surprising that the author of Coming of
Age in Samoa, which focuses a lot on sexual roles
in sexual behavior, should be cited as a vanguard of
the sexual revolution in America. And Nancy look a House,
who's the author of Margaret Mead The Making of an
(26:04):
American Icon, wrote that Coming of Agents Mill was considered
to exhibit the new attitude of openness toward the topic
of sexuality as well as to promote the practice of it.
And this was reflected to somewhat and needs personal life
and her relationships because they were quite revolutionary for the
time as well. She once famously said, to paraphrase, that
(26:27):
everyone should get married three times once we're leaving home
and basically doing it when you're young, wants to have kids,
and once for companionship. And she also once wrote that
quote one can love several people and that demonstrative affection
has its place in different types of relationships. Yeah, she's
(26:47):
got a fascinating I mean not to sound like I'm gossiping,
but she she doesn't have a fascinating background when it
comes to her love life because she had deep and
lasting relationships with both men and women. And for instance,
her first marriage was to Luther Cressman, who's a seminarian.
They got secretly engaged when she was just sixteen. They
(27:09):
got married when she was twenty one, but by the
time she was twenty seven, they've gotten divorced. But that
wasn't just like one linear story of one person. In
between there, she had an affair with this New Zealand
man named Rio Fortune, which absolutely sounds like the hero
in a romance novel. Uh And their story sounds like
(27:30):
one too. She met him on her journey to Samoa.
They had an affair while she was still married to Cressman,
and then they got married after she divorced him. And
then while she was married to Fortune, while they're out
doing field work, they meet this dazzling New Zealand anthropologist
named Gregory Bateson, and a love triangle ensues for a while,
(27:53):
and then she finally ends up ditching Fortune for Bateson,
whom she has her daughter Catherine with and ultimately divorces
fifteen years later. But I mean it really seems like
when she talks about bates and when you think about
their years in Bali together, you know, collecting those tens
of thousands of photographs and film, that he was that
companion marriage. I mean, she got the kid and the
(28:16):
companion in the same the same union. Yeah. But kind
of threading through all of this, all of these loves
and marriages is also relationships with women. I mean, when
she was at Barnard, she had several love affairs with
other female students, and she ended up spending her golden
years with fellow anthropologist Rhoda Metro. But there was one
(28:39):
woman in particular who was a constant in her life,
that's right. Her academic mentor turned long term lover was
Ruth Benedict Franz Boaz's research assistant. They worked together throughout
the years, but there was always this undercurrent of passion. Um.
(29:00):
There's a book recently published to Cherish the life selected
letters of Margaret Meade that really reveal the intensity of
the intimacy between these two women that also spanned both
of their marriages. Yeah, one line from one of the
letters that really struck me was when Margaret wrote, and
a day like today, when I've worked from dawn to
(29:22):
dusk without stopping, I feel very peaceful and it is
such a joy to go to sleep loving you, loving
you and waken so so. Anthropologist or not, she remained
a poet throughout her life, especially in her passionate love
letters to Ruth. Well, and they it seemed like they
corresponded to about a lot of what she wrote about
(29:43):
in terms of sexuality and gender roles and like what
all of that meant, and the idea of monogamy and restrictiveness,
because I mean, it's so clearly did not fit with
her personal desires and experience. Yeah. And I think it
was in a letter that she wrote when she was
basically on her way to go Mary Rio Fortune Rio,
(30:08):
I was about to start singing that song um where
she basically is talking to Ruth about how silly and
almost arbitrary the straight versus gay heterosexual versus homosexual man
and woman and woman and man distinctions are and that
everyone she, she writes, has the capacity to love and
be attracted to everyone else, which is something that you know,
(30:31):
definitely was not a common way of thinking at the time.
And one thing that didn't come up in what we
read about Margaret Meat, although I'm sure it's out there
if we look at more in depth biographies of her,
is how her personal life and especially getting divorced and
remarried a number of times like she did, how that
(30:53):
you know, paint painted or painted the public's perception of
her and her work because she is one of the
only female academics at such a high level and with
such you know, renown, And I wonder if you know,
as is often the case, um, if her personal life ever,
(31:14):
you know, attempted to be used against her. I don't know,
And I mean before we went we came into record,
I asked Kristen why she thought that Margaret Meade even
bothered getting married. And that's not to say that she
wasn't attracted to men and didn't love these men that
she married, but if her love for Ruth was so
like spiritually enriching and deeply overwhelming. I mean, why not
(31:38):
just either not marry the men or or live with
Ruth or something. And I don't have the answer to that. Well,
I think it's partially too because it seems like she
could be in love with multiple people at the same
time too, you know, so it was never just a
question of a singular love for her um Now. Certainly, though,
(32:00):
we should note that her relationships with women would not
have been in the public eye because like those letters
written to Ruth weren't publicly released until two thousand one,
so that wouldn't have caused any scandal of time. But
what did cause a scandal was, you know, some some
consternation about her research methods, accusations of her fitting results
(32:25):
to suit her hypotheses, inserting herself too much in her
subjects lives, and really just being a cultural determinist to
a faulty and a lot of people then and some
now take issue with her spelling out how different cultures
ways of doing things could apply to Western society too.
(32:45):
There was basically the finger wagging of like, no, you
just need to observe and make your notes and write
your book and then don't extrapolate any of those things
don't basically write the Atlantic think piece about your own book. Margaret, Well,
it reminded me of the you know, criticisms of quote
unquote activist judges, because she was very much an activist academic. Yeah.
(33:07):
And one of her biggest, sort of ugliest critics was
New Zealand born anthropologist Derek Freeman. And he was so
i mean just determined to discredit her to the point
where she even met up with him in nineteen sixty
four to talk about some of his concerns around her
(33:27):
methodology and results. But he was so determined to sort
of tear her down and show her to be a
fraud that his books about her sort of overtook Mead's
own contributions to anthropology. People started to take what Freeman
wrote as gospel. Yeah, I mean, it really did seem
like it became his life goal to take down Margaret
(33:50):
made because you know, that meeting between them was in
nineteen sixty four, and the Library of Congress even has
correspondence that she wrote to him, you know, following up
on some of his questions about her methods. And it
wasn't until three though, years after she had died, talked
about kicking someone while they're down, uh, that he publishes
(34:14):
through Harvard University Press, Margaret meet and Samoa then making
an unmaking of an anthropological myth. Yeah, and so he
discredits her interviews with two Samoan girls who had discussed
their sexual activity, and Freeman basically said, you were duped.
These girls were pulling your leg. They were just teasing.
(34:36):
But the way that he pursued his research was to
have one of these women's sons, who was a staunch Christian,
interview his now Christian mother in order to you know,
supposedly quote unquote correct Meads blasphemous uh and awfully and
(34:58):
terribly controversially sexy uh interviews with his mom. It was
too sexy mother, too sexy to sexy. Well, that was
the thing. He told his mom that the purpose of
the interview was to you know, correct this major insult
that was manifest in that book. So more recently, you
(35:20):
see Boulder anthropologist Paul Shankman painstakingly reviewed meads notes and
Derek Freeman's research and righted the record in two thousand
nine The Trashing of Margaret Mead Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy.
And also he published a follow up two thousand eleven
(35:40):
analysis that only provided more evidence in favor of Mead. Yeah,
so basically he points out that this Freeman guy had
interviewed entirely different groups of people from entirely different villages
in Samoa and points out, like, hey, it's not like
the same village culture in each place, Like everybody's different
(36:04):
they you know, so interviewing different people twenty years later
isn't going to produce the same result that Margaret Meade
found necessarily, especially if you're interviewing anitarily different village. He
also points out that Freeman used to contact universities and
demand that they revoke his opponent's PhD. So this guy
just sounds like a modern day like troll, but he
(36:26):
was so successful. Yeah, he really Harvard University Press for sure.
And so what Shankman uncovered is that meat is what
Mead really drew on for her conclusions for her book. Yeah,
so it was based on interviews with adolescent girls of
whom over or sexually active. Now, what is true, as
(36:52):
a piece in the Atlantic talks about is how Incoming
of Age in Samoa, Mede definitely downplay some of the
uglier aspects of of Owen sexuality and kind of paints
it to be like, oh, it's all healthy exploration. Let's
not mention things like rape or physical punishment if you
violate sexual norms, etcetera, etcetera. But she did not completely invent,
(37:13):
as Freeman suggested, this idea of, you know, a culture
where sex was permitted outside the bounce of marriage. Yeah,
and you know what she would have said to Freeman, piffle.
Apparently that was another thing noted in her New York Times.
Oh bit was that her typical response to her critics,
(37:33):
because she got it, I'm sure all the time, because
when you're a public figure, you're just gonna have to
deal with that. Um. And just imagine if she lived
today having to deal with Twitter. My gosh, she would
probably just have like an auto bought set up with
oh piffle to read to respond, can we do that?
We probably can, Caroline, But that would be her her
(37:55):
usual response of just like, oh piffle whatever, just like
brushed it off. She was very easy about it. Well,
I'm so I'm so grateful that Shankman uncovered the stuff
about Freeman, because we were really sort of in a
dangerous period, teetering on believing that all of this stuff
that Freeman said was was true, that so many people
(38:15):
used his words as uh proof that Margaret Meade was
just some hack. Yeah, I mean Coming of Age is
by no means a perfect text in a lot of
ways is outdated and anthropology classes today, But I mean
trying to smear her entire legacy was certainly a bridge
too far. Yeah, And so I was fascinated to read
(38:39):
Margaret Mead's history, especially the way that her own personal
life and love and feelings might have influenced her view
on the entire world. Yeah, or vice first time. Yeah,
I'm just curious to know almost in the same kind
of nature and nurture kind of way, like what came
first all of us research and discovery about you know,
(39:02):
the role that cultural constructs play and sex norms and
things like that, or just her being the original punk.
So let us know all of your thoughts. Barnard grads,
are you super pumped about one of your most notable women?
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our
(39:22):
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast or message us on Facebook. And I bet we
have some messages from the Freeman camp coming our way.
But we have some letters to read to you when
we come right back from a quick break. I can
admit it, the last thing I want to do after
I get off work is wait in line at the
(39:43):
grocery store, take all of that stuff home, carry it
up the steps to my apartment, and cook a complicated meal.
It's all I can do to just get in my
stretchy pants once I get home. And plus it's expensive
and unhealthy to get take out. So what is the
right solution. I have to tell you. The right solution
is Blue Apron. Blue Apron delivers farm fresh ingredients and
(40:05):
step by step recipes to your home, allowing you to
create healthy, handcrafted meals without going to the grocery store.
For less than ten dollars of meal. Blue Apron since
you fresh ingredients perfectly proportioned, making cooking healthy meals really
easy and fun. No trips to the store and no
waste from all those unused ingredients. Plus you'll learn to
cook with specialty ingredients that are normally hard to find.
(40:27):
That's right, Caroline. Blue Apron is perfect for date night
cooking with friends, and they even offer family plans with
kid friendly ingredients. Each balanced meal is five to seven
hundred calories per serving and so tasty you'd never know.
Cooking takes about half an hour. Shipping is flexible and free.
In the menus are always new. You'll never get the
(40:48):
same meal twice. So this week on Blue Apron's menu,
how does pad kemel with chicken sound? Or if you're vegetarian,
some eggplant parmesan and go meaty with fresh tomato sauce.
M M, I'm hungry already, So check out this week's
menu and get your first two meals free by going
(41:09):
to Blue apron dot com slash mom Stuff Mine in
Caroline's treat. Really, the first two meals are on stuff
mom never told you when you go to Blue Apron
dot com slash mom Stuff. Okay, well, I have a
letter from Emma. She says, this is a really belated letter,
(41:31):
but I couldn't help it right in after listening to
your Chess Queen's episode, I was a competitive chess player
when I was in elementary school, and your commentary on
the not so female friendly world of chess hit home completely.
I never participated in any ladies only chess tournaments, perhaps
because I wouldn't have had anyone to play against. I
was lucky to have one or two other girls competing
in the same tournament as me. Both when I competed
(41:52):
at the kids and adult levels, the boys were often
very annoyed to be matched against me, and one even
went to my dad before a match and asked if
he should take it easy on me. Learning chess was
such a father daughter bonding activity for me and my dad.
I think he was proud to have a daughter involved
and kicking boys butts at such a male dominated game,
and I think his guidance and support throughout all of
(42:12):
it played a huge role in me becoming the feminist
I am today. I think waiting through the world of
competitive chess was my first crash course in sexism and
Tommy had to fight for what I wanted despite what
people assumed I was or was not capable of because
I was a girl. I think a lot of what
led me to quit was the culture of the game,
and I'm certain it keeps a lot of interested and
talented women out of it. I'm so glad you covered
(42:35):
this topic. I wish I'd heard more women talking about
the game when I was in my chess playing budding
feminist days. My dad and I are looking forward to
discussing your podcast the next time we see each other. Well, thanks, Emma,
So I'm gonna let her hear from Lucia, who wrote
today at work, I saw a Facebook post about period
pride and I got super excited and from Argentina, and
(42:56):
I didn't know about this trend of being more open
about your peer in the US. I work in I
t in a huge telecommunications company, so you might imagine
most of my co workers are guys. In addition to that,
I work at twelve and nine shift and after six
I'm the only woman in the office. After that hour,
work is pretty quiet, so we talk and make jokes
(43:17):
a lot. I have this really macho coworker who has
a lot of opinions about women and also says awful things.
For instance, he's surprised when I'm interested in gaming programming,
and one saw me holding a book and said, Lucia
with a book, that's weird. Once we were talking about
YouTube channels and one of my coworkers said you should
(43:37):
start one, you're funny, and this guy replied, what would
she talk about? And as a joke, I started doing
this bit where I'm hosting a YouTube channel about periods.
So now every once in a while we do a
fake YouTube video and I even have an opening where
I say Hi, I'm Lucia and today we're talking about
periods and one of the guys I was a jingle
(43:57):
from a Panti Liner commercial. Anyway, I thought it was
a funny story. And after hearing your podcast, maybe I'll
launch an actual channel with subtitles so you can enjoy it.
Thanks for all the great podcasting and have a wonderful week.
And yes, please do that, and when you launch it,
send us a link because I want to aid to
hear that jingle and be to see your fake period
(44:20):
show because that is a fantastic idea. So thanks everybody
who's written in to us Mom staff at house. Stuff
works dot com is where you can send us your
letters and for links all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts, including
this one with a link so you can learn more
about Margaret Meade. Head on over to stuff Mom Never
Told You dot com for more on this and thousands
(44:47):
of other topics. Does it have stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from How Supports Nott.
Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and
I'm Caroline. And today we're talking about the Mother of
the World. Not Gaya. Oh, not not the character from
(00:23):
Captain Planet. No. No, we're talking about cultural anthropologist Margaret
Mead and Caroline. Of course we both knew who Margaret
Mead was, and she's one of the most important women
of the twentieth century, one of the most important academics
and thinkers and speakers. But I didn't know that much
(00:46):
about her, you know, and really her impact. Yeah, I
had no idea either how far reaching her impact was,
both in terms of sexuality. She fixed a lot on sexuality,
but also gender roles and the way that Western society
maybe doesn't do it right in terms of raising their adolescence. Yeah,
(01:11):
and there were and are still academics who raise an
eyebrow at her methodology and the way she approached her
studies and then applied them to social issues of the time.
But in terms of women trailblazers and who I mean
(01:32):
she she was one of those people who just seemed
so singularly focused on her place in the world and
so unconcerned with what other people thought about her. Oh yeah,
I mean she pursued with the greatest thirst knowledge about
everything around her. And I mean, as we'll talk about that,
(01:52):
that's essentially how she was raised. She was raised to
just watch and observe and take notes on the world
around her. And Caroline she fascinates me down to her
signature wardrobe because she not only had this sort of
signature bob haircut that she wore, but she also always
wore a cape and walked with a stick, a forked
(02:13):
stick because she like twisted her ankle I think when
she was not that old and just like kept walking
with it. And in nineteen sixty nine, Time magazine described
her as quote looking like a cross between a stern
schoolmarm and an impish which which is fantastic. Yeah, it's
(02:35):
so funny. If that were anyone else, I would think
that was a negative description, But I mean, I think
she's so fantastic. And I don't know what Time meant
necessarily with that tone, but she is great and she
had an incredible look to her which was just as
unique as she herself was. And one of her most
famous quotes that does reflect her worldview in a lot
(02:56):
of ways is very much kindred to stuff Mom never
told you's ethos. So she once said, never doubt that
a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Um.
So who was she though we mentioned anthropology, So she was, yes,
an anthropologist. She was a leading academic of her day,
(03:18):
male or female. She did not like being described as
a leading female thinker because she was, I mean, among
the best. And she was an intellectual instigator of the
sexual revolution and also second wave feminism. Yeah, and she
sought to apply her background and focus in anthropology and
social science to solving issues like childhood education and also
(03:43):
mental health. Not everybody loved her. There were certainly people
who took issue with her from her own time up
to now, and who have tried very hard to discredit
her and her research. But she has contributed a lot
who are understanding of other cultures, are understanding that the
(04:04):
West is not the best, that different cultures can be
equally as great, but just different. Yeah, And looking back
at everything that she did, especially in the second half
of her life, she just comes across as so endlessly curious,
constantly absorbing new knowledge and then spreading it. Back out
(04:26):
into the world. So The New York Times noted in
her obituary that the American Natural History Museum once listed
her specialties as quote, education and culture, relationships between character,
structure and social forms, personality and culture, cultural aspects of
problems of nutrition, mental health, family life, ecology, atistics, transnational relations,
(04:49):
national character, cultural change, and culture building. So I mean,
not not much. Just yeah, just a cursory knowledge of
a couple of things. Yeah, I love it. Becau has
the descriptions of her It's often mentioned just how often
she lectured. She would deliver a ton of lectures every year,
and they were always on wildly different topics. And there
(05:12):
was even a quirky note I think was in her
New York Times obituary that she delivered so many lectures
so often and was also just so well versed in
so many diverse topics that she might show up at
like a men's luncheon or something and talk about the
sexual habits of a certain culture. She would get some
of her topics mixed up just because she was like,
(05:34):
I'm on a train and are a plane to some
other city. Now, oh yeah, she delivered the sexuality talk
to like a clergy group. I got it mixed up.
But she would even lecture on like very esoteric subjects
about the particular linguistics of the small cultural group in
(05:54):
the South Pacific. But she could go on and on
and on and was very engaging. Yea some he was
saying that, Oh, they raised a hand and asked a
question about this one group's use of a certain type
of nut in their in their diet. And she talked
about it at such length that you would have thought
that that was her main academic focus in life. I mean,
t ld R. I'm jealous of Margaret Mead's brain period.
(06:18):
And she was also astoundingly prolific. She wrote over twenty books,
co authored even more, and some of the titles include
Coming of Age in Samoa, which is probably her most
famous book. She also wrote in ve Sex and Temperament
in Three Primitive Societies, which we'll talk about more. She
(06:42):
also wrote in ninety nine Male and Female, a study
of the sexes in a Changing World, which Betty for
Dan would have a thing or two to say about.
And then in nineteen seventy two her autobiography was BlackBerry Winter. Yeah,
so poetic, but herself was very poetics some of the
first stuff, some of the first writing that she published
(07:04):
was literally poetry. I mean, she was she could do
it all, and so much of that is because of
her incredible background well in Caroline. Speaking of poetry, I
think it's time to let our listeners know about where
she came from. So in West Philadelphia, and I did
(07:26):
know one there were some Quaker parents having some fun.
And that's all we've got, listeners, But we've got really
excited when we realized that we could do the Fresh
Prince theme for just the first half line of her bio. Yeah,
so she knows she literally was born in Philadelphia to
Quaker parents. And side note, I mean I might go
back to this after we get out of the studio
(07:46):
and really try to flesh it out. So listeners, if
you if you'd like me to do some old school
women's history raps. Oh they do, let us know. I
can hear them screaming, Yes, she was born, like you
said to Quaker parents were also social scientists. Her dad,
Edward was an economist and Emily was a social reformer
(08:09):
and suffragists. And she was really a true child of
the progressive era. And she was the oldest of five
although one of her sisters, Catherine, died at nine months,
which was really devastating for her because she actually named
that baby. Yeah, I side out love the Quakers. I
told Kristin this, and she gave me a look like,
what are you talking about? I didn't know this about you. Yeah,
(08:31):
I love the Quakers because A I do have a
lot of Quakers in my ancestry. B b oat mail,
which I just can't like oat me. I'm sorry, but see, um,
the Quakers are just an incredible force in American history.
And I in fascinated by how so many of our
early abolitionists and feminists and suffragists came out of the
(08:55):
abolition movement, and so here we have. I was so
delighted to see that she also came out of this tradition.
And anyway, I think her family dynamics are fascinating too
and so sweet. For instance, her dad nicknamed her Punk,
and when her little brother Richard came along, she became
the original Punk, not girl punk. He in fact, was
(09:18):
called the boy Punk. Yeah. And and about that, Mead
wrote quote a reversal of the usual pattern, according to
which the girl is only a female version of the
true human being. The boy, which sounds a lot like
what we've talked about on the podcast before in terms
of the male being the kind of the baseline normal.
(09:39):
But here's the thing, though, her dad super cute that
he called her the original punk, but he was still
a man of his generation as well. He once commented
that it was too bad that she was a girl
because he had really had high hopes to, you know,
have a really impressive child. Um. But you know, she
(10:01):
would go on to prove him wrong in that regard, yeah, exactly.
And helping in that early development was her dad's mother,
Martha Adeline Ramsey Mead, who helped raise her while her
mom pursued her own studies and research. And her grandmother
sounds like a fascinating character because she thought that being
cooped up indoors was terrible and she had the kids
(10:24):
go out a lot and observe the outdoors, observed nature.
And so this was also a true part of the
progressive era about worrying about urban children being locked up
inside for too long and being separate from nature. And
while Margaret and her siblings formal education was a little
bit spotty, they only went to school occasionally, uh they
(10:49):
did rely on Martha, their grandmother, and local artists to
instruct the kids in everything from writing and observation and
research to art sculpture drawing. I mean, these were pretty
well rounded kids. And one thing that her mom and
(11:09):
grandmother both tasked Margaret with doing was taking notes on
her siblings development, because they were all about notes that
like tracking, you know, what time they were feeding, how
they were sleeping, what they were doing. And this really
laid the foundation for future anthropological research. I mean, all
(11:30):
the field notes that Margaret would take throughout her professional life,
and the Library of Congress has a lot of these
childhood notes, and I thought it was so funny that.
I Mean, part of the reason why she also took
notes was because the family moved a lot, apparently, so
she would write down addresses and sort of like who
was around and where they were to keep up with
all of that. But when it came to just keeping
(11:52):
a personal diary, she wasn't as great at it. But
when it came to just you know, taking being tabs
on how her siblings diets were progressing, she was great well.
And and that's something that her mother had done too.
When she was pregnant with Margaret She tracked everything that
she felt an experienced while she was pregnant, and then
(12:14):
that continued after Margaret was born. She would keep notes
on how her daughter was developing. So this is definitely
a family of social scientists. So in ninety Margaret has
already started college. She started out at DePaul University, didn't
really like it and transfers to Barnard and she skips
around a little bit. She starts off as an English
(12:36):
major and then goes into psychology and then ends up
in anthropology after taking a class with Franz Boas, who's
considered the father of anthropology and thankfully and also delightfully
a critic of social Darwinism and eugenics, so which was
surprisingly rare for a guy like that at the time. Yeah,
(12:57):
super rare in that era. Yeah, eugenics was horrifyingly popular.
Yeah for sure. Um. But boas Is research assistant was
a woman named Ruth Benedict, and they really together, Boas
and Benedict lit a fire in need not only just
for anthropology, but to document remote cultures that hadn't been
(13:20):
touched by industrialization. Um. And because you know, the ideas,
you know, westernization comes along and kind of just destroys
cultures and it's wake. And so she ends up studying
under Boas for her master's and PhD at Columbia, and Boas,
being her mentor, thought that Mead should study Native American adolescents,
(13:43):
but Mead was like, sorry, I've got this whole thing
of like traveling my own path and doing what I want.
So she ends up going to Polynesia and she focuses
on Samoan culture. So over nine thirty nine she studied
seven cultures around Polynesia and Indonesia, focusing especially on how
(14:04):
culture shaped adolescent development. And out of this some of
our earliest ideas about this whole thing we talked about
all the time on stuff I've never told you called
gender roles. Delicious, delicious, tasty, piping hot gender roles comes
out of this, and need was especially interested to find
(14:26):
out whether the pain of adolescence, and especially female adolescents,
was nature or nurture. So in she publishes this little
book you might have heard of, called Coming of Age
in Samoa, and for the most part it is your
basic field study of these young Samoans and how they're
(14:50):
growing up. But there I think it's like two chapters
where she really focuses in on sexuality, and she came
to a pretty radical conclusion, right, Yeah, she freaked everybody
out because she said that, hey, your adolescence doesn't have
to be this period of neuroticism. You don't have to
be so worried about everything and so repressed. And she
(15:11):
says that, look, look at these Samoan girls. They're having
a great time and adolescents and they're not dealing with
the neuroticism of American youth because they're not as bound
to restrictive gender roles as American girls are. But also
the idea that pre marital sex and extramarital sex wasn't
a huge deal. Adolescents were permitted to experiment, so to speak,
(15:35):
but not so much experimenting and like getting freaky, just
like allowing themselves to explore their developing sexuality, yeah, without
that risk of slut shaming. And she really painted that
idea of exploration versus repression as a part of healthy development.
And this book was hugely popular and really put her
(15:57):
on the map. But as we'll get into a little
bit later, the fanfare wouldn't always be so favorable. Um,
but she continues her work. I mean she this book
Coming of Agents Samoa was more of the layman's guide
to this. She would also come back and write a
more academic take on the whole experience. I mean she's
continually traveling and doing these this field research um. So
(16:21):
in ninety five, for instance, she really begins digging into
nature versus nurture when it comes to gender roles and
temperament for what would become the book Sex and Temperament,
which was based on field studies in Papua New Guinea. Yeah,
and in her work, she broke ground by separating the
(16:41):
ideas of biological sex from culturally constructed gender differences. So
drawing that line between hey, gender is almost inflicted on us,
whereas sex is the more biological component, and you can
see the groundwork being laid of her cultural determinism. That
would attract criticism because she really really really clung onto
(17:05):
this idea and promoted this idea that it's not so
much in a differences between men and women, but rather
culture's role in shaping these gender roles that separate us. Right,
one of the big things that she points out is like, hey,
when you look at different cultures and you see that
in one culture, men are responsible for this thing, and
another culture the woman is responsible for the thing. But
(17:27):
in the culture where the man is responsible for it,
that thing, whatever it is, is viewed more highly because
the man is doing it. And she said that that's
the kind of thing that she found to be true
across cultures, not necessarily the actual gender roles that were
being filled, so like, whether it was the hunting or
the cooking, or the protecting of the village or whatever,
(17:50):
it was the simple fact that when a man does it,
it does tend to be more highly valued. Yeah, And
and in doing so, she's also laying the groundwork for
the second way feminism. Not to get ahead of ourselves,
but I mean, think about this. This is going on
and coming out in the popular press in the nineteen thirties,
(18:13):
you know, Like I mean, I can only imagine the
reception at the time of someone suggesting this in the
United States, when gender roles are still just so so
very restricted. Because this is also the same time that
Indiana Jones has gone about doing his thing, you know,
And so I bet he probably wasn't necessarily on board
(18:33):
with everything she had to say. Do you think they
have a cross paths? I don't know. I mean maybe
I feel like he was more in like Germany and
in the Middle East. Well, speaking of Germany. UM, So
world War two happens. Like by this point though World
War Two, she's already gone to Bali and lived there
with her third husband, and they completed this massive visual
(18:58):
anthropological cole i s of over thirty five thousand photos
and film strips, which was unprecedented at the time. But
because of World War Two, access to the South Pacific
is closed off. So Need and Ruth Benedict, that former
research assistant of Franz Boas, found the Institute for Intercultural Studies.
(19:21):
And it's also around this time that her field work
in those distant cultures begins tapering off. And this is
also a point to note that we are going through
her biography with a broad brush just because she did
so much um but with World War Two, her focus
and her work really does shift more state side. Yeah.
(19:42):
And so after the war she does return to Manus
Island and Papua New Guinea to study the impact of
people's exposure to the wider world thanks to warfare, and
this trip ends up informing her beliefs in culture shaping
societal ills like racism and environmental mistreatment. It and it
ultimately prompts her famous quote that Kristen said about never
(20:05):
doubting that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world, and in this case it's for better
or for worse. So in addition to founding the Institute
for Intercultural Studies and being a university lecturer, she she
also became a curator for the American Natural History Museum
and a very busy public speaker. Like we mentioned earlier,
(20:28):
um and she would speak at venues like museum talks,
but also congressional hearings, late night talk shows U N summits.
She had regular magazine columns in places like read Book
and more so her voice was everywhere right. And I
think it is because of stuff like that that she
is such a huge figure. I mean, obviously she contributed
(20:51):
so much to academian, to our understanding of other cultures
and sexuality, amongst so many other topics. But it is
the fact that she was so accessible that helped. I mean,
her books are very readable, and I know that sounds
silly to say about a book, but I mean that's
a big deal when you're coming from like an academic perspective,
(21:11):
she was in incredibly readable, very accessible, and so here's
a woman that you might have delivering a speech in
a very academic setting, but you're also reading her column
and read book like my mom reads read book, you know.
I mean, it allowed a huge swath of the population
to become familiar with her and her ideas, right because
(21:32):
in a lot of ways, her field studies really fostered
what would become activism. Um in nineties six though, she
died from cancer, and she was posthumously awarded the Presidential
Medal Medal of Freedom in nineteen among so many other
(21:52):
accolades that she would garner over the years. She was
also elected president of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, which was a huge deal because I want
to say she was only the second woman to ever
be in that position. And also during her tenure she
did a lot in terms of enacting policies to be
(22:14):
more accepting of women and people who were not straight
white men. We've talked a lot already about her role
in the development of second way feminism and in changing
attitudes towards sex and sexuality. And you better believe that
we're going to tell you a lot more about that
after a quick break. So, despite the fact that Margaret
(22:46):
Meade's own mother had been a suffragist, Mead herself did
not self label as a feminist, And like Kristen said,
if you called her a female scientist or a female
this or that, she was it down with the descriptors.
She just wanted to be known and appreciated for her
work itself. But that work did intersect with the whole
(23:08):
idea behind Second Way feminism, since her research focused on
how culture shapes gender roles. Yeah. So in nine the
publication of Male and Female, a Study of the Sexes
in a Changing World, was pretty groundbreaking. The New York Times,
for instance, hailed quote Dr Mead's book has come to
(23:30):
grips with a cold war between the sexes and has
shown the basis of a lasting sexual piece. So, as
we've mentioned a number of times now, she really was
laying the foundation for all the conversations that we have
today in terms of gender constructs and roles and what
that really means and how they play out. Um Now. Interestingly, though,
(23:51):
Betty for Dan, author of The Feminine Mystique, would later
criticize her essentialist portrait of motherhood in a book Male
and Female, because I mean there were there were some
quotes that could raise eyebrows, such as quote, differences insects
as they're known today are based on the bringing up
(24:12):
by the mother. She's always pushing the female towards similarity,
in the male toward difference. So I could see how
for Dan might say, hey, that's an unfair generalization. Although
for Dan considered herself an heir to Margaret Mead's research
and legacy. Right, Yeah, there was a quote about how
(24:33):
she had done her part to further feminism or she
had taken feminism as far as she could, and so
for Dan saw herself as the heir to Mead's work,
which I think is funny. But she's putting that on herself. Yeah,
I mean, that's that's quite a statement to make. Um.
And and unfortunately Margaret Meade, you know, didn't live long
(24:55):
enough to really be able to respond. Um. But even
though me didn't directly identify as a feminist, which some
think rooted back to her childhood rebellion against her mother,
she definitely got it. I mean, she publicly dismantled the
idea that feminists have penis envior just want to be men,
(25:19):
but rather that we were striving to access cultural privileges
exclusively offered or at least made far more accessible to men.
And she understood conflicting demands to be a homemaker, child reader,
and income earner, and would encourage social networks and support
for working moms. I mean, and she really did, especially
later in her life, become very outspoken about gender equality
(25:44):
and women's rights. Yeah, and in terms of the sexual revolution,
though it's not surprising that the author of Coming of
Age in Samoa, which focuses a lot on sexual roles
in sexual behavior, should be cited as a vanguard of
the sexual revolution in America. And Nancy look a House,
who's the author of Margaret Mead The Making of an
(26:04):
American Icon, wrote that Coming of Agents Mill was considered
to exhibit the new attitude of openness toward the topic
of sexuality as well as to promote the practice of it.
And this was reflected to somewhat and needs personal life
and her relationships because they were quite revolutionary for the
time as well. She once famously said, to paraphrase, that
(26:27):
everyone should get married three times once we're leaving home
and basically doing it when you're young, wants to have kids,
and once for companionship. And she also once wrote that
quote one can love several people and that demonstrative affection
has its place in different types of relationships. Yeah, she's
(26:47):
got a fascinating I mean not to sound like I'm gossiping,
but she she doesn't have a fascinating background when it
comes to her love life because she had deep and
lasting relationships with both men and women. And for instance,
her first marriage was to Luther Cressman, who's a seminarian.
They got secretly engaged when she was just sixteen. They
(27:09):
got married when she was twenty one, but by the
time she was twenty seven, they've gotten divorced. But that
wasn't just like one linear story of one person. In
between there, she had an affair with this New Zealand
man named Rio Fortune, which absolutely sounds like the hero
in a romance novel. Uh And their story sounds like
(27:30):
one too. She met him on her journey to Samoa.
They had an affair while she was still married to Cressman,
and then they got married after she divorced him. And
then while she was married to Fortune, while they're out
doing field work, they meet this dazzling New Zealand anthropologist
named Gregory Bateson, and a love triangle ensues for a while,
(27:53):
and then she finally ends up ditching Fortune for Bateson,
whom she has her daughter Catherine with and ultimately divorces
fifteen years later. But I mean it really seems like
when she talks about bates and when you think about
their years in Bali together, you know, collecting those tens
of thousands of photographs and film, that he was that
companion marriage. I mean, she got the kid and the
(28:16):
companion in the same the same union. Yeah. But kind
of threading through all of this, all of these loves
and marriages is also relationships with women. I mean, when
she was at Barnard, she had several love affairs with
other female students, and she ended up spending her golden
years with fellow anthropologist Rhoda Metro. But there was one
(28:39):
woman in particular who was a constant in her life,
that's right. Her academic mentor turned long term lover was
Ruth Benedict Franz Boaz's research assistant. They worked together throughout
the years, but there was always this undercurrent of passion. Um.
(29:00):
There's a book recently published to Cherish the life selected
letters of Margaret Meade that really reveal the intensity of
the intimacy between these two women that also spanned both
of their marriages. Yeah, one line from one of the
letters that really struck me was when Margaret wrote, and
a day like today, when I've worked from dawn to
(29:22):
dusk without stopping, I feel very peaceful and it is
such a joy to go to sleep loving you, loving
you and waken so so. Anthropologist or not, she remained
a poet throughout her life, especially in her passionate love
letters to Ruth. Well, and they it seemed like they
corresponded to about a lot of what she wrote about
(29:43):
in terms of sexuality and gender roles and like what
all of that meant, and the idea of monogamy and restrictiveness,
because I mean, it's so clearly did not fit with
her personal desires and experience. Yeah. And I think it
was in a letter that she wrote when she was
basically on her way to go Mary Rio Fortune Rio,
(30:08):
I was about to start singing that song um where
she basically is talking to Ruth about how silly and
almost arbitrary the straight versus gay heterosexual versus homosexual man
and woman and woman and man distinctions are and that
everyone she, she writes, has the capacity to love and
be attracted to everyone else, which is something that you know,
(30:31):
definitely was not a common way of thinking at the time.
And one thing that didn't come up in what we
read about Margaret Meat, although I'm sure it's out there
if we look at more in depth biographies of her,
is how her personal life and especially getting divorced and
remarried a number of times like she did, how that
(30:53):
you know, paint painted or painted the public's perception of
her and her work because she is one of the
only female academics at such a high level and with
such you know, renown, And I wonder if you know,
as is often the case, um, if her personal life ever,
(31:14):
you know, attempted to be used against her. I don't know,
And I mean before we went we came into record,
I asked Kristen why she thought that Margaret Meade even
bothered getting married. And that's not to say that she
wasn't attracted to men and didn't love these men that
she married, but if her love for Ruth was so
like spiritually enriching and deeply overwhelming. I mean, why not
(31:38):
just either not marry the men or or live with
Ruth or something. And I don't have the answer to that. Well,
I think it's partially too because it seems like she
could be in love with multiple people at the same
time too, you know, so it was never just a
question of a singular love for her um Now. Certainly, though,
(32:00):
we should note that her relationships with women would not
have been in the public eye because like those letters
written to Ruth weren't publicly released until two thousand one,
so that wouldn't have caused any scandal of time. But
what did cause a scandal was, you know, some some
consternation about her research methods, accusations of her fitting results
(32:25):
to suit her hypotheses, inserting herself too much in her
subjects lives, and really just being a cultural determinist to
a faulty and a lot of people then and some
now take issue with her spelling out how different cultures
ways of doing things could apply to Western society too.
(32:45):
There was basically the finger wagging of like, no, you
just need to observe and make your notes and write
your book and then don't extrapolate any of those things
don't basically write the Atlantic think piece about your own book. Margaret, Well,
it reminded me of the you know, criticisms of quote
unquote activist judges, because she was very much an activist academic. Yeah.
(33:07):
And one of her biggest, sort of ugliest critics was
New Zealand born anthropologist Derek Freeman. And he was so
i mean just determined to discredit her to the point
where she even met up with him in nineteen sixty
four to talk about some of his concerns around her
(33:27):
methodology and results. But he was so determined to sort
of tear her down and show her to be a
fraud that his books about her sort of overtook Mead's
own contributions to anthropology. People started to take what Freeman
wrote as gospel. Yeah, I mean, it really did seem
like it became his life goal to take down Margaret
(33:50):
made because you know, that meeting between them was in
nineteen sixty four, and the Library of Congress even has
correspondence that she wrote to him, you know, following up
on some of his questions about her methods. And it
wasn't until three though, years after she had died, talked
about kicking someone while they're down, uh, that he publishes
(34:14):
through Harvard University Press, Margaret meet and Samoa then making
an unmaking of an anthropological myth. Yeah, and so he
discredits her interviews with two Samoan girls who had discussed
their sexual activity, and Freeman basically said, you were duped.
These girls were pulling your leg. They were just teasing.
(34:36):
But the way that he pursued his research was to
have one of these women's sons, who was a staunch Christian,
interview his now Christian mother in order to you know,
supposedly quote unquote correct Meads blasphemous uh and awfully and
(34:58):
terribly controversially sexy uh interviews with his mom. It was
too sexy mother, too sexy to sexy. Well, that was
the thing. He told his mom that the purpose of
the interview was to you know, correct this major insult
that was manifest in that book. So more recently, you
(35:20):
see Boulder anthropologist Paul Shankman painstakingly reviewed meads notes and
Derek Freeman's research and righted the record in two thousand
nine The Trashing of Margaret Mead Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy.
And also he published a follow up two thousand eleven
(35:40):
analysis that only provided more evidence in favor of Mead. Yeah,
so basically he points out that this Freeman guy had
interviewed entirely different groups of people from entirely different villages
in Samoa and points out, like, hey, it's not like
the same village culture in each place, Like everybody's different
(36:04):
they you know, so interviewing different people twenty years later
isn't going to produce the same result that Margaret Meade
found necessarily, especially if you're interviewing anitarily different village. He
also points out that Freeman used to contact universities and
demand that they revoke his opponent's PhD. So this guy
just sounds like a modern day like troll, but he
(36:26):
was so successful. Yeah, he really Harvard University Press for sure.
And so what Shankman uncovered is that meat is what
Mead really drew on for her conclusions for her book. Yeah,
so it was based on interviews with adolescent girls of
whom over or sexually active. Now, what is true, as
(36:52):
a piece in the Atlantic talks about is how Incoming
of Age in Samoa, Mede definitely downplay some of the
uglier aspects of of Owen sexuality and kind of paints
it to be like, oh, it's all healthy exploration. Let's
not mention things like rape or physical punishment if you
violate sexual norms, etcetera, etcetera. But she did not completely invent,
(37:13):
as Freeman suggested, this idea of, you know, a culture
where sex was permitted outside the bounce of marriage. Yeah,
and you know what she would have said to Freeman, piffle.
Apparently that was another thing noted in her New York Times.
Oh bit was that her typical response to her critics,
(37:33):
because she got it, I'm sure all the time, because
when you're a public figure, you're just gonna have to
deal with that. Um. And just imagine if she lived
today having to deal with Twitter. My gosh, she would
probably just have like an auto bought set up with
oh piffle to read to respond, can we do that?
We probably can, Caroline, But that would be her her
(37:55):
usual response of just like, oh piffle whatever, just like
brushed it off. She was very easy about it. Well,
I'm so I'm so grateful that Shankman uncovered the stuff
about Freeman, because we were really sort of in a
dangerous period, teetering on believing that all of this stuff
that Freeman said was was true, that so many people
(38:15):
used his words as uh proof that Margaret Meade was
just some hack. Yeah, I mean Coming of Age is
by no means a perfect text in a lot of
ways is outdated and anthropology classes today, But I mean
trying to smear her entire legacy was certainly a bridge
too far. Yeah, And so I was fascinated to read
(38:39):
Margaret Mead's history, especially the way that her own personal
life and love and feelings might have influenced her view
on the entire world. Yeah, or vice first time. Yeah,
I'm just curious to know almost in the same kind
of nature and nurture kind of way, like what came
first all of us research and discovery about you know,
(39:02):
the role that cultural constructs play and sex norms and
things like that, or just her being the original punk.
So let us know all of your thoughts. Barnard grads,
are you super pumped about one of your most notable women?
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our
(39:22):
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast or message us on Facebook. And I bet we
have some messages from the Freeman camp coming our way.
But we have some letters to read to you when
we come right back from a quick break. I can
admit it, the last thing I want to do after
I get off work is wait in line at the
(39:43):
grocery store, take all of that stuff home, carry it
up the steps to my apartment, and cook a complicated meal.
It's all I can do to just get in my
stretchy pants once I get home. And plus it's expensive
and unhealthy to get take out. So what is the
right solution. I have to tell you. The right solution
is Blue Apron. Blue Apron delivers farm fresh ingredients and
(40:05):
step by step recipes to your home, allowing you to
create healthy, handcrafted meals without going to the grocery store.
For less than ten dollars of meal. Blue Apron since
you fresh ingredients perfectly proportioned, making cooking healthy meals really
easy and fun. No trips to the store and no
waste from all those unused ingredients. Plus you'll learn to
cook with specialty ingredients that are normally hard to find.
(40:27):
That's right, Caroline. Blue Apron is perfect for date night
cooking with friends, and they even offer family plans with
kid friendly ingredients. Each balanced meal is five to seven
hundred calories per serving and so tasty you'd never know.
Cooking takes about half an hour. Shipping is flexible and free.
In the menus are always new. You'll never get the
(40:48):
same meal twice. So this week on Blue Apron's menu,
how does pad kemel with chicken sound? Or if you're vegetarian,
some eggplant parmesan and go meaty with fresh tomato sauce.
M M, I'm hungry already, So check out this week's
menu and get your first two meals free by going
(41:09):
to Blue apron dot com slash mom Stuff Mine in
Caroline's treat. Really, the first two meals are on stuff
mom never told you when you go to Blue Apron
dot com slash mom Stuff. Okay, well, I have a
letter from Emma. She says, this is a really belated letter,
(41:31):
but I couldn't help it right in after listening to
your Chess Queen's episode, I was a competitive chess player
when I was in elementary school, and your commentary on
the not so female friendly world of chess hit home completely.
I never participated in any ladies only chess tournaments, perhaps
because I wouldn't have had anyone to play against. I
was lucky to have one or two other girls competing
in the same tournament as me. Both when I competed
(41:52):
at the kids and adult levels, the boys were often
very annoyed to be matched against me, and one even
went to my dad before a match and asked if
he should take it easy on me. Learning chess was
such a father daughter bonding activity for me and my dad.
I think he was proud to have a daughter involved
and kicking boys butts at such a male dominated game,
and I think his guidance and support throughout all of
(42:12):
it played a huge role in me becoming the feminist
I am today. I think waiting through the world of
competitive chess was my first crash course in sexism and
Tommy had to fight for what I wanted despite what
people assumed I was or was not capable of because
I was a girl. I think a lot of what
led me to quit was the culture of the game,
and I'm certain it keeps a lot of interested and
talented women out of it. I'm so glad you covered
(42:35):
this topic. I wish I'd heard more women talking about
the game when I was in my chess playing budding
feminist days. My dad and I are looking forward to
discussing your podcast the next time we see each other. Well, thanks, Emma,
So I'm gonna let her hear from Lucia, who wrote
today at work, I saw a Facebook post about period
pride and I got super excited and from Argentina, and
(42:56):
I didn't know about this trend of being more open
about your peer in the US. I work in I
t in a huge telecommunications company, so you might imagine
most of my co workers are guys. In addition to that,
I work at twelve and nine shift and after six
I'm the only woman in the office. After that hour,
work is pretty quiet, so we talk and make jokes
(43:17):
a lot. I have this really macho coworker who has
a lot of opinions about women and also says awful things.
For instance, he's surprised when I'm interested in gaming programming,
and one saw me holding a book and said, Lucia
with a book, that's weird. Once we were talking about
YouTube channels and one of my coworkers said you should
(43:37):
start one, you're funny, and this guy replied, what would
she talk about? And as a joke, I started doing
this bit where I'm hosting a YouTube channel about periods.
So now every once in a while we do a
fake YouTube video and I even have an opening where
I say Hi, I'm Lucia and today we're talking about
periods and one of the guys I was a jingle
(43:57):
from a Panti Liner commercial. Anyway, I thought it was
a funny story. And after hearing your podcast, maybe I'll
launch an actual channel with subtitles so you can enjoy it.
Thanks for all the great podcasting and have a wonderful week.
And yes, please do that, and when you launch it,
send us a link because I want to aid to
hear that jingle and be to see your fake period
(44:20):
show because that is a fantastic idea. So thanks everybody
who's written in to us Mom staff at house. Stuff
works dot com is where you can send us your
letters and for links all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts, including
this one with a link so you can learn more
about Margaret Meade. Head on over to stuff Mom Never
Told You dot com for more on this and thousands
(44:47):
of other topics. Does it have stuff works dot com
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com