Chapter 10
Summary
This chapter gives the reader some insight into the average girl. Mead begins by discussing how the children have seen life and death many times with the adults making little effort to keep them innocent in such matters.
Mead then writes about many of the girls individually. She discusses Pele and how the girl would delight in telling Mead about how her little sister was of “disputed parentage.” She writes of Tuna who was a calculating child and less giving than other children. She writes about several other girls as well and concludes by saying that the girls experienced an orderly development of “slowly maturing interests and activities.”
Discussion
I like how we got to learn a little more about the individual girls in this chapter. While it had already been mentioned that the children were present when women gave birth, I was surprised to think that the small children knew so much about death. I’m reminded of a show I watched recently in which a little girl’s bird died. Not wanting to explain death to her, the parents continuously told the girl that the bird was just sleeping.
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