Cultural differences in child development: Navajo adolescents in middle schools

Abstract

Many years ago, Margaret Mead went to Samoa at the urging of her professor, Franz Boas, to test the universality of a widely held belief about human development: that sexual maturation in adolescence produced a period of sturm und drang, of stress, anxiety, and emotional upheaval. Her analysis of the lives of teenagers in Samoa and other Pacific Island societies (Mead, 1928, 1930) indicated that, at least in some cultures, coming of age is not fraught with sexual tension and ambivalence. She suggested that while the process of biological maturation is unmistakably regular among human beings, how human beings react to that process varies according to each society.