9 Margaret Mead Quotes on Family

Margaret Mead quotes on family

14. Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.

18. I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman. And as I had my father's kind of mind- which was also his mother's- I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.

30. Instead of needing lots of children, we need high-quality children.

40. No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

41. 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 situation.

42. Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law.

47. Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, Go to sleep by yourselves. And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.

49. Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.

54. The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.