Final answer:
Margaret Mead's 'Coming of Age in Samoa' explores the differing attitudes towards sexual socialization in Samoan culture as opposed to the United States, concluding that Samoans experience adolescence with more freedom and less crisis.
Step-by-step explanation:
The book Coming of Age in Samoa, written by Margaret Mead, questioned the sexual life stages and the processes of sexual socialization in Samoan culture compared to that of the United States. Mead discovered that Samoan society had a more relaxed and open attitude toward sexuality, asserting that unlike the Euro-American context, Samoan adolescents experienced their teenage years as a golden age of romantic and sexual freedom. This differed significantly from the crisis-ridden narrative often associated with adolescence in the West. Mead's work emphasized how cultural contexts can shape the experiences of growing up and has been influential in studies related to gender and sexuality.
Through her observations, Mead noted that Samoan girls were exposed to the realities of childbirth, menstruation, and copulation from an early age, fostering a more relaxed perspective towards these aspects of life. Additionally, Samoan adolescents, both boys, and girls, were encouraged to experiment with romantic and sexual relationships without the repression and strict discipline surrounding sexuality prevalent in Western cultures. This exposure resulted in a socially normalized passage into adulthood that contrasted sharply with the sexual mores of the United States during the 1920s.