Book Reading #15: Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 5
Summary
In chapter 5 Mead discusses the different groups of friends a girl has as she ages. When the girls get to the age of about seven, the girls make friends outside of their family. The friends come from both relationship and neighborhood groups. No intense friendships are made at this age.

Mead gives several examples of girls who interacted differently with these groups. One girl, Luna, tended to stay closer to her aunt and grandmother. A different girl, Vina, was always the “little girl” of the group, because she followed a group of older girls around.

When the girls reach the age of sixteen or seventeen their group of friends still relies on relatives but is limited to smaller groups of two or three. Proximity does not play a role in the selection of friends at this point. Instead, relationships and similar sex interests plays a role.

Mead also spends a little time discussing the groups of friends the boys have. Young boys follow the same social pattern as the young girls. However, the sixteen and seventeen year old boys gang together just as they do in the younger age group. The boys also have two special relationships that form between two boys both called the soa.

The author also notes that grouping is influenced in many cases by rank and prospective rank as well.

Discussion
This chapter was a bit denser than the others. There was a lot to take in about the social workings of their groups and the times at which the groups change. In ways it sounds very different from groups of friends here. At the ages described here I had several different groups of friends all at once: the school group, neighborhood group, the common interests group, and the family group.