Anthro, sex and marriage
(About what Margaret Mead wrote on sex and marriage in 1953)
by Lolita Nikolova (.pdf)
References:
Anthro, sex and marriage
(About what Margaret Mead wrote on sex and marriage in 1953)

References:
American President (online). An online reference resource (Last visited on June
7th, 2009).
Doherty, W.G. (2000). Consumer Marriage. Marriage and families, August 2000
(online)
Mead, M. (2003) [1953]. Modern Marriage. The Nation (Internet source)
Wikipedia (online). Margaret Mead.  (Internet source) (Last visited on June 7th,
2009).

Student’s related website: Anthro, sex and marriage http://www.iianthropology.
org/psychology_sex_and_marriage_mead.html

Margaret Mead is one of the most prominent American anthropologists of the 20th
century not only because of her field enthographic research and publications, but
also because of her social active position and public appearance. The thoughts on
sex and modern marriage from 1953 came out when in the world was the power of
the Cold War as a glacier of the human relationships. This was toward the end of
the Period of Depression and World Conflict (1921-1963) and abt 8 years before
the beginning of the Social Change and Soviet relationships (1961-1989). Also,
Mead wrote her essay in the period in which perhaps her third marriage had
collapsed or even she was in a process of divorced from Gregory Bateson, also a
prominent anthropologist. Then, many of the pessimistic thoughts in the essay
could be just a reflection of the cold time and of a cold period her personal life. For
instance, she wrote:
      “The principal threat to the success of such [post World War II] marriage
comes from timing…. Two people who built their whole relationship on a cheerful,
frank partnership in rearing children, and enjoying mountain-climbing picnics, now
face each other for the first time [Launching adult children’s period – L.N.] in all
these years across a dining-room table, alone. Here the lack of complexity in their
relationships, the lack of erotic sophistication in the male, who has substituted the
demand that his wife show “normal sex feeling” for any demand on himself for
elaboration of love-making manners, begin to show…”
      Such straight conclusion is not very usual in anthropology, since the last is a
discipline about the diversity in life and in the cultures. Today there is also a
distinction between sex and gender while in 1950s the gender problems had been
obviously still analyzed as sex ones. The destructuring the history of marriage
reveals also opportunity for concept like “psychological marriage” that replaced the
“institutional marriage”, in which “families existed for individuals rather than vice
versa” (Doherty 2000). However, there are theoretical base and emotional
motivation in the essay of Mead that makes nowadays her writing as fresh as in
1953.
      To begin with, the real statement of the longevity and the complexity of the
relationships based on marriage and sex. Today we recognize five periods in the
family life cycle: independence, coupling or marriage, parenting (babies through
adolescents), launching adult children and retirement (or senior) years.  Although
without such brief distinction, Mead focuses on the dialectics of the sexual
relationships and chose the social clothes of the changing role of women in
society. As we know from the system theory, the change especially of one key
agent impacts all system. In my opinion, Mead had pointed exactly to the core
factor in the changing meaning of marriage in the USA after the Second World War
– the women’s emancipation. Last but not least, she also gives a prospective view
on the opportunity for keeping the successful marriage by changing the family and
out-of family social environments – from new job for the husband to new friends
and new landscape. Such cultural-anthropological points could be instructive for
many families and family therapists.
      To conclude, in my mind is the thought of Margaret Mead towards the end of
the essay that can be expanded for the whole life cycle of people – since the
moment we have started building our gender personality, our everydayness and
eventness become about realizing and extending the depth of our sex feelings, as
one of the main branches in our tree of life.