Â鶹APP

Margaret Mead – by Rob C. Croes –

Top 10 Facts about Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead was a cultural anthropologist and writer. She also featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 20th century between the 1960s and 1970s.

Margaret Mead, being a communicator of anthropology in modern America, influenced the Western culture and was often considered very controversial in her academic approach.

Let’s delve into 10 interesting facts about Margaret Mead;

1. Margaret was born and raised in Pennsylvania

Margaret was born on December 16, 1901. She was the firstborn of her four siblings. Her siblings were:  Katharine Mead, Elizabeth Mead, Priscilla Mead, and Richard Mead.  

Her father was Edward Sherwood Mead, he was a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and her mother, Emily Mead, was a sociologist who studied Italian immigrants in the 19th to 20th century.

Her family was very religious and she was acquainted with Christianity very early in her childhood.

2. Margaret Mead was married three times

Margaret Mead – by Edward Lynch –

She had three spouses during her life namely;  Gregory Bateson, Reo Fortune and Luther Cressman.

She married her first husband Luther Cressman in 1923. Luther was a theology student at the time who eventually became an anthropologist.

In 1925, she went on a field trip for research and the boat returning from Samoa, she met Reo Fortune, a New Zealander headed to Cambridge, England, to study psychology.

They were married in 1928, after Mead’s divorce from Cressman. In 1936, she married Gregory Bateson who was a British anthropologist, social scientist and linguist amongst many of his other works in other fields. 

3. Mead attended four different universities

Margaret Mead’s yearbook photograph – by Barnard College –

In 1919, Margaret entered  DePauw University, she transferred to Barnard College a year later.

In 1923 she earned her bachelor’s degree and graduated from Barnard College. In 1924, she entered the graduate school of Columbia University.  Here she began studying with professor Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict.  She later earned her master’s degree.

Down the road in 1929, she received her PhD from Columbia University after years of research and fieldwork.

4. Margaret had one offspring; a daughter

Together with Gregory Bateson, her third husband, they had one daughter Mary Catherine Bateson who was born on December 8, 1939.

Mary closely followed in her mother’s footsteps to become a cultural anthropologist and an American author.

Among her books was With a Daughter’s Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, a recounting of her upbringing by two famous parents.

5. Margaret was a recognizable figure in Anthropology academia

Margaret Mead is receiving the medal for the Kalinga Prize from René Maheu – by – Roger Lesage –

She focused her research on problems of child-rearing, personality, and culture.

She is credited with the study of sign processes which are any activity, or process that involves interpreting signs, to the sign’s interpreter.

In later life, Mead was a mentor to many young anthropologists and sociologists,

6. Mead influenced the sexual revolution in the 1960s

Sexual liberation was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the United States and the developed world from the 1960s to the 1980s. It included increased acceptance of sex outside of traditional heterosexual and monogamous relationships, especially marriages.

Margaret wrote reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures which influenced the 1960s sexual revolution.

She was a proponent of broadening sexual conventions within the context of Western cultural traditions.

7. Margaret Mead has authored over 20 books

Coming of age in Samoa title page – by Margaret Mead –

In 1928, she published her first book Coming of Age in Samoa which went on to become a bestseller.

The book indicates her belief in cultural determinism, a position that caused some later 20th-century anthropologists to question both the accuracy of her observations and the soundness of her conclusions.

Her other books include but are not limited to: Growing Up in New Guinea, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis, Continuities in Cultural Evolution,  A Rap on Race and Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World.

8. Mead worked as a distinguished Professor of Sociology and Anthropology

 Margaret taught at The New School and Columbia University, where she was an adjunct professor from 1954 to 1978 and was a professor of anthropology and chair of the Division of Social Sciences at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus from 1968 to 1970, founding their anthropology department. In 1970, she joined the faculty of the University of Rhode Island as a professor of anthropology.

9. Margaret played a role in drafting the American Episcopal Book of Common Prayer

Margaret Mead surrounded by Children – by Tomste1808 –

Based on her childhood and upbringing in Christianity, Margaret was part of the team that played a role in drafting the 1979 American Episcopal book of common prayer. 

The episcopal church took part in the Anglican communion and the book of common prayer is the short title of several related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism.

It is used in over 50 different countries and over 150 different languages.

10. Margaret was inducted into the National women’s hall of fame

This is an American institution created in 1969 by a group of men and women in Seneca Falls, New York.

As of 2021, it had 303 inductees, the inductees are nominated by members of the public and selected by a National Panel of Judges based on the changes they created that affect the social, economic or cultural aspects of society; the significant national or global impact and results of change due to their achievement; and the enduring value of their achievements or changes

Induction ceremonies are held every odd- numbered year in the fall, with the names of the women to be honored announced earlier in the spring, usually during March, Women’s History Month.

Margaret Mead died of pancreatic cancer on 15 November 1978 at the  New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York. Margaret Mead was both a student of civilization and an exemplar of it.

To a public of millions, she brought the central insight of cultural anthropology: that varying cultural patterns express an underlying human unity. She not only mastered her discipline, but she also transcended it.