Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Mead suggests that despite experimental living arrangements, the traditional family structure remains resilient.
In plain terms
No matter the living experiment, families naturally return.
What can you take from it?
Family structures are hard to replace.

Where it applies

  • social experiments
  • urban planning
  • cultural shifts

Putting it to work

  • support families
  • plan communities
  • study social trends

Questions to consider

  • What defines family?
  • Why do we return to tradition?

Another view

Modern alternatives like communal living do thrive for some.

More from Margaret Mead

  1. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

    Permalink to quote #39
  2. Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situ…

    Permalink to quote #41
  3. Man's role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary.

    Permalink to quote #38

Related quotes

  1. I want to say to the young people, Honor thy father and thy mother. Your days will be longer and more fruitful.

    James BrownJames Brown quote #25
  2. In the nuclear family the child is confronted by only two adults contrasted by sex. The tendency towards polarization is unavoidable. The duplication of effort…

    Germaine GreerGermaine Greer quote #30
  3. Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour's household, and, underneath, another -…

    Willa CatherWilla Cather quote #58