Margaret Mead (1901–1978) was a groundbreaking American anthropologist who popularly influenced the understanding of gender, adolescence, and culture through her ethnographic studies. As a popular and successful anthropologist, she was a trailblazer and role model for women. She was significantly influenced by mentor Franz Boas, emphasizing cultural relativism and opposing biological determinism and eugenics.
As with Albert Einstein and physics, or Babe Ruth and baseball, Margaret Mead was anthropology.1
Mead’s work has had a foundational influence on feminism and was an icon of second-wave feminism, particularly for her critical analysis of gender roles as socially constructed rather than biologically determined, as well as her advocacy for women’s professional and personal autonomy. However, this interpretation of Mead is simplified by many feminists who embrace her earlier work that focused on social conditioning but ignore/reject her later work that considered the role reproductive biology also played in gender. Both Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935) demonstrate culture as contingent and variable, particularly regarding gender roles. Meanwhile, Mead’s book Male and Female (1949) emphasized biological influences, especially reproductive biology, on gender. Mead lauded the role of motherhood and suggested society should celebrate and organize around men and women’s unique strengths. Feminists of the time (e.g. Betty Friedan) considered this as a gender essentialist betrayal. Mead clarified that she always believed that human temperament (innate tendencies) has a biological basis, but character and gender identity emerge from interaction with culture. Ultimately, Mead had a nuanced and complex understanding of sex and sex roles as an interplay between biology and culture.2
Contemporarily, Mead’s work occupies a complex and contested, but usually appreciated, place in anthropology. Most anthropologists today recognize Mead’s work as respectable and groundbreaking, but also see it as a product of its time, with significant methodological and interpretive limitations.
Mead was a notably interesting human: intellectually open, socially experimental, academically accomplished, and publicly renowned, all during a period where women had little room for opportunity. Mead married three different men and engaged in romantic/sexual intimacy with multiple partners, including women, though not publicly.
Conservatives have attacked her influential work, notably Coming of Age in Samoa, accusing her of idealizing non-Western cultures, undermining traditional family structures, and promoting moral relativism. Her embrace by feminists, along with her accessible, popular writing, intensified the conservative backlash, transforming her into a symbol of liberal academia’s perceived threat to American values.1
| Book | Focus/Findings | Impact on Discourse |
|---|---|---|
| Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) | Observed Samoan adolescents to determine if it was universally stressful stage. She found Samoan girls had a comparatively relaxed environment, attributed to openness about sexuality. | Popularized cultural relativism, challenged universality of Western sexuality, challenged Western cultural chauvinism, and brought public fame. |
| Sex and Temperament (1935) | Observed gender roles among three New Guinea societies, each showing unique gender expectations. Analyzed how cultures establish norms for men & women. | Influential within feminist movement, empirically demonstrating gender roles as socially conditioned rather than biologically determined. |
| Male and Female (1949) | Sought universal biological constants in gender formation by applying psychoanalysis; scrutinized American society & family life; lauded role of motherhood. | Suggested men and women have innate tendencies shaped by reproductive biology. Seen as betrayal by feminists of the time. (Note: Mead was ultimately biopsychosocial in analysis.) |
Footnotes
-
Sam Dresser, “The Meaning of Margaret Mead,” Aeon, January 21, 2020, https://aeon.co/essays/how-margaret-mead-became-a-hate-figure-for-conservatives. ↩ ↩2
-
Elesha J. Coffman, “When It Came to Sex and Gender, Margaret Mead Had It Both Ways | Aeon Essays,” Aeon, July 1, 2021, https://aeon.co/essays/when-it-came-to-sex-and-gender-margaret-mead-had-it-both-ways. ↩