At the time of the publishing of
Coming of Age in
Samoa (1928), a large portion of the
academic world had recently rediscovered the works of
Gregor Mendel and built upon it a
pseudoscientific doctrine of
genetic determinism. This
meme gave root to
the
social darwinism and
eugenics movements. Conversely, there
were the
cultural determinists who believed
human behavior was almost entirely a result of
culture or environment. Seeing as human behavior is distinct from
animal behavior,
the
cultural determinists, or "
nurturists" took the argument that
selective
breeding is a dangerous proposition when dealing with humans.
Mead brought about the
downfall of the eugenics movement with a book containing lines such as "at last there is
only the mellow thunder of the reef and the whisper of lovers," as well as "It is not
pleasant to realize that we have developed a form of family organization (meaning the
nuclear family) which often cripples the emotional life, and warps and confuses the
growth of many individuals' power to consciously live their own lives." Mead
found a "negative instance" in which the turmoil of adolescence, believed to be a natural
force in human development, was an unknown.
Throughout the book Meade boldly
contrasted American and Samoan life, arguing that the open, permissive Samoan attitudes
about adolescent sex provided a smooth transition between childhood and adulthood.
Conversely, of American life she wrote, “when there is added to the pitfalls of experiment the suspicion
that the experiment is wrong, and the need for secrecy, lying and fear, the strain is so
great that frequent downfall is inevitable.”