"Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries&

[derrida]

Not that I don't appreciate what you wrote, goat, but Mead's real point was that emotionally turbulent adolescence is not an unavaoidable consequence of the human genome because there exist cultural institutions that allow teenagers to come to terms with the increased responsibilities of adulthood and attendant social expectations. According to Mead, among the Samoans this took the form of a period of free sexual experimentation before eventually establishing a more-or-less monogamous household. Please explain to me why you think Mead's conclusions are false.

I don't think you can discount instances of polyandry and matriarchy in formulating a sociobiological account of the species. I think that if you look at each case, the deployment of aspects of biological sexual dimorphism for certain activities corresponds to specific dominant economic modes which may or may not have been predominant throughout the development of the species.