Samoa culture demonstrates how much the tragic or the easy solution of the Oedipus situation depends upon the inter-relationship between parents and children, and is not created out of whole cloth by the young child's biological impulses. Margaret Mead More Quotes by Margaret Mead More Quotes From Margaret Mead Every act of motherhood contains a dual intent, as the mother holds the child close and prepares it to move way from her, as she supports the child and stands it firmly on its own feet, and as she guards it against danger and sends it out across the yard, down by the stream, and across the traffic-crowded highway. Unless a mother can do both - gather her child close and turn her child out toward the world - she will fail in her purpose. Margaret Mead motherchildrenmoving The closest friends I made all through life have been people who also grew up close to a loved and loving grandmother or grandfather. Margaret Mead grandparentgrandmotherpeople American society is very like a fish society. . . . Among certain species of fish, the only thing which determines order of dominance is length of time in the fishbowl. The oldest resident picks on the newest resident, and if the newest resident is removed to a new bowl, he, as oldest resident, will pick on the newcomers. Margaret Mead dominanceimmigrationorder The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society. Margaret Mead contemptsocietylaw In the presence of grandparent and grandchild, past and future merge in the present. Margaret Mead grandparentgrandchildrenpast The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over. Margaret Mead metamorphosisairway Men have always been afraid that women could get along without them. Margaret Mead men Instead of needing lots of children, we need high-quality children. Margaret Mead qualitychildrenneeds I don't consider my marriages as failures! It's idiotic to assume that because a marriage ends, it's failed. Margaret Mead divorceassumingends the experience of having brothers and sisters, born of the same parents, sleeping under the same roof, eating at the same table, is an inescapable, delightful and repelling, desired and abhorred part of each child's life. Margaret Mead brothersleepchildren The protection of a ten-year-old girl from her father's advances is a necessary condition of social order, but the protection of the father from temptation is a necessary condition of his continued social adjustment. The protections that are built up in the child against desire for the parent become the essential counterpart to the attitudes in the parent that protect the child. Margaret Mead girlattitudechildren Pigs and cows and chickens and people are all competing for grain. Margaret Mead naturepigspeople I've been married three times - and each time I married the right person. Margaret Mead marriagethreetime The liberals have not softened their view of actuality to make themselves live closer to the dream, but instead sharpen their perceptions and fight to make the dream actuality. Margaret Mead fightingviewsdream Female animals defending their young are notoriously ferocious and lack the playful delight in combat which characterizes the mock combats of males of the same species. There seems very little ground for claiming that the mother of young children is more peaceful, more responsible, and more thoughtful for the welfare of the human race than is her husband or brother. Margaret Mead husbandbrothermother I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples - faraway peoples - so that Americans might better understand themselves. Margaret Mead lives-of-othersstudymight Dear Math, please grow up and solve your own problems. I'm tired of solving them for you. Margaret Mead growing-uptiredwitty Photographs [are] of course heavily dependent upon the culture, the disciplinary point of view and the idiosyncratic vision of the particular photographer-analyst. Margaret Mead visionviewsculture Much of the ill-tempered railing against women that has characterized the popular writing of the last two years is a half-heartedattempt to find a way back to a more balanced relationship between our biological selves and the world we have built. So women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too. Margaret Mead selfmotherwriting All of us who grew up before World War II are immigrants in time, immigrants from an earlier world, living in an age essentially different from anything we knew before. Margaret Mead differentagewar
