The remainder of Chapter VIII of And Keep Your Powder Dry is absolutely fascinating. Margaret Mead discusses the formation of the conscience, the American experience of adolescence, and how they form America’s drive toward Progress.

I am skipping her discussion of conscience-development for a couple of reasons. As intriguing as it is, I am not sure how an anthropologist’s explanation in 1942 compares to the understanding of modern day social scientists and psychologists, and I feel like her descriptions of child-rearing in other cultures could prove not only inaccurate by modern understanding, but plain offensive. That said, you should definitely get the book just to read it!

Here, we are going to trust the veracity of her claims as understood in 1942, and then turn our attention to American adolescence. Before we dive-in, though, I want to bring your attention to the quote that I put on the homepage of this blog. The further along the book goes, the more relevant it becomes. Please, keep these words of hers in mind:

“…when I talk about what Americans must do if they are to use the full resources of their character structure, I will be making highly technical statements, and they will often sound exactly like a Sunday-school lesson.”

(Berghahn Books 2000)

Remember, this is a puritanical country. Our culture couches things in moral terms. Now, buckle up—we are going to talk about the American teenager!

First, let me tell you as a present-day parent of two American teenagers that the stress and strain she describes is still very much a part of our experience, even for non-religious households.

How many parents of American teenagers do you think can relate to having a teen question whether or not they even have the right to tell them what to do?

All of them.

The answer is that all parents have been found wanting. This is still very much how things go in American adolescence.

I hope it brings some small comfort to parents to know that this does serve some patriotic purpose!

It might be making readers uncomfortable that she is explicitly lauding Judeo-Christian ethics for raising up people committed to progress and always doing better, or that might be completely evident to you. Either way, she warned us it would be like Sunday School up in here. Please, keep reading.

As I was saying, this is still the way we do it. Eighty years on and less religion in our homes generally, and still, we do it this way.

And, these are the kids we have.

American teenagers, for all their cynicism and existential dread, still are talking about what we should be doing. Even with their long reputation of not caring much, young Americans still protest, march, and rant that their elders can and, more importantly, should do better.

Mead makes me believe that this our hope, always.

Even before our current crisis, a friend of mine, who is a professional historian, reminded a room full of people that we have been through hard times before. He then spoke of the era that Margaret Mead describes in Chapter VIII of And Keep Your Powder Dry. She describes that time as a betrayal of our values by an entire generation.

“Are Today’s Youth Different?” is the chapter’s title. In it, Mead first takes aim at the parents of the young adults of the time. Those young adults would come to be known as The Greatest Generation. Now, we take aim at their children with “ok, Boomer” much the way their parents were targets in ‘42.

We are reminded that American Exceptionalism was alive and well in Mead’s time when reading the words “…whose single-handed virtue has killed the Indians…” (2000). It is one of those statements likely to make many modern Americans cringe. What does this mean for us now, when the destruction of indigenous cultures and peoples is recognized as genocide? Ask yourself that question, but stick with her.

The framing of the betrayal in terms of favor and punishment from God might seem out-of-date now. This sentiment, that our fathers put money first and squandered the future of their children, though, feels fresh. Aren’t our children, who prepare for shootings perpetrated by classmates at school and who have a computer with access to free porn at home, “exposed to a moral peril such as no group of Americans has ever been exposed to before,” (2000) too? The specific anxieties are different, but the worry is the same today as yesterday: we aren’t prepared for this. These kids aren’t prepared for this.

Mead wasn’t considered a conservative as far as I can tell, but calling the New Deal wicked is the sort of description likely to make conservative readers smile and liberal readers scoff. Her description of relief/aid makes it clear that she sees it as contrary to good character. That’s not the whole story of the need for relief, though, and she understands that. One thing I really admire about Mead is how seamlessly she moves from a scathing criticism to obvious understanding of the other side, like in this next passage.

Mead explains how our aversion to relief comes from our puritanical roots. She blames a generation of Americans for losing God’s favor and lambastes the country for even needing relief programs, but then she easily acknowledges that “wealth was the inevitable reward of virtue” (2000) doesn’t really hold water in a financial collapse (or, say, a quarantine).

This does not come across as hypocrisy. She simply displays a keen awareness that, sometimes, a thing lends itself to the opposite thing. Our modern dialogue would benefit from that kind of nuance and clear-eyed look at the country and its people.

After she demands America wrestle with its mistakes, she asks her readers if their failure of will and purpose could produce a generation of Americans unfit to build a new world, when building new worlds is supposed to be what Americans are uniquely fit to do. Did we already cause so much damage that American kids these days aren’t ready for the future?

She was expressing that anxiety about The Greatest Generation.

Mead and her fellow Americans had the fortune of being certain in their way forward: beat the Nazis. By 1942 (though just years after a Nazi gathering in Madison Square Garden), Americans were unified around that cause. They shared a common cause in the defeat of fascism.

Our shining cause isn’t so clear, though it feels more obvious now than it did about four weeks ago. We’ve definitely learned a lot about preparation, and keeping our powder dry!

What have we learned, though, about leading in the future?

And, are these kids prepared for that?

In And Keep Your Powder Dry, Margaret Mead slowly shifts her attention from American parents to good, ole American sibling rivalry in Chapter VII, “Brothers and Sisters and Success.” I’ve been looking forward to sharing this one with you!

The relevance of these words feels crazy in a world of avocado toast and standardized testing.

“Breast is best.” “Fed is best.” “95th percentile.” I don’t think you’d find a modern pediatrician talking about the “smartest 15-month-old babies they know,” (2000) thank goodness, but it doesn’t make modern moms any less anxious about the growth charts and milestones and how clearly the other babies are talking. SAT scores, GPAs, scholarships. The measurements don’t stop, and every child doing well is the cause of panic in ten mothers whose kid isn’t. The focus is always new, but the stress, Mead tells us, has always been the same. For American moms, the persistent worry is: can my kid measure up?

Oh, she makes me laugh as she explains some important things. In American families, Mead asserts, this focus on comparing kids who are roughly the same age means comparisons of siblings that sets up a particularly American flavor of sibling rivalry. Try to catch the older sister; don’t get outpaced by the younger. The message is one of relentless competition.

But here is the real gem, when Mead threads the needle to explain how this American family dynamic plays out in our worldview. You’ll recognize some Americans more than others in this!

“The baby sibling was in just that position—he didn’t have to hold the spoon and laboriously gather up recalcitrant bits of meat which slipped and slid around his plate until they were worn and uninteresting and cold—he just lay there with his mouth open and had food poured in.”

‘I’ve worked for everything I’ve got. But he had it easy from the start.’

(Berghahn Books 2000)

Is this relevant in 2020?

Do you hear this bitterness combined with envy in our current political debates? I do. I hear it all the time. I cannot read a comment thread on the Internet without hearing this sentiment spoken like truth. It’s a crux of the American character that creates a lot of our polarization. When it’s not part of your worldview, making an injustice of it is. Of course, you might yell, we just pour the milk into the baby!

Finally, Mead explains how our parenting toward success creates a sibling rivalry that can look bitter, but is transitory, so not hopeless. I’m mostly including it, because it’s Mead, like so much in this chapter, in fine form.