There the anthropologist found a near-paradise of youth freedom. In Samoan culture young people were considered full members of society from birth with equal rights and dignity to adults. Instead of being sent to school they learned from life experiences, and once able were free to take jobs and occupations of their choice. Youth as young as 14 were able to sit on the government council. Young people were able to engage in romantic and sexual relationships without puritanical condemnation and scrutiny. It was an environment of permissiveness and freedom. Yet Margaret Mead could find no trace of the angst, stress, and alienation that so characterizes teens in our society.

At the end of her anthropological study, Mead found that youth does not have to be a time of stress and strain but cultural conditions make it so. Rebelliousness and anger is not the fault of the youth but of the society that represses them. Mead described her nine-month sojourn on Samoa and outlines her finding in this book, which became a bestseller amidst great controversy. Contemporary critics objected to its frank discussions of sexuality and unrestrained youth. The story of this radical finding jolted the social s science of young people out of old doctrines into the twentieth century and has since caused Mead to be called the "founding mother" of modern anthropology.

Unfortunately, today some parts the Samoan islands have changed from places of freedom to ones of confinement, as told in the article Gulag Schools in this issue. Margaret Mead passed away in 1978, but her book still shows that adolescent angst is not some inherent curse but the result of a repressive society, that disappears when youth are made free.