With a Daughter's Eye by Mary Catherine Bateson

First published: 1984

Type of work: Memoir

Time of work: The twentieth century

Locale: The United States and the islands of Bali and Samoa

Principal Personages:

• Margaret Mead, an anthropologist
• Gregory Bateson, an anthropologist, ethologist, and philosopher of science
• Mary Catherine Bateson, their daughter, an anthropologist and linguist
• Franz Boas, Mead’s professor and benefactor, a principal figure in modern anthropology
• Ruth Benedict, Boas’ graduate student, an anthropologist and Mead’s intimate companion

Form and Content

Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson (who prefers the name Catherine) wrote With a Daughter’s Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson from her unique perspective as the couple’s only child. For her sources, she deliberately ignored her parents’ voluminous papers and published works, just as she studiously avoided interviewing any of their colleagues and friends, relying instead on her own memories. Much in the first four chapters, during which she describes her early childhood, is therefore impressionistic. Nevertheless, she recounts extraordinarily vivid memories of Mead and Bateson, buoyed no doubt by their photographic and film record of Catherine beginning at her birth. Mead, who spent most of her professional life exploring forms of childhood and child rearing, observed her daughter as if she were a subject for scholarly research, keeping copious notes as well as a film record. Notwithstanding, she was an affectionately attentive mother, and in With a Daughter’s Eye Catherine Bateson provides a fond remembrance of her famous parents.

In the central section of her book, Catherine describes her parents as she recalls them during her adolescence. After their divorce in 1950, Catherine remained with her mother in New York City, while vacationing with her father in California. She ably devotes much of the last several chapters to a technical analysis of her parents’ work. Her father, Gregory Bateson, the son of the renowned English geneticist William Bateson, received early training as a naturalist. In fulfillment of parental expectations, he attended the University of Cambridge, taking his first academic degree in biology in 1925. Afterward, he transferred his keen observational skills to the scrutiny of human cultures, earning a Cambridge graduate degree in anthropology in 1935.

A polymath, Bateson’s accomplishments included his anthropological work on the Iatmul, chronicled in his book Naven (1935); his collaborative work with Mead in Bali, in which they pioneered photography and films as ethnographic research tools; and his development of the concept of schismogenesis (later known as positive feedback), in which systems, either mechanical or human, are perpetually adjusted through circular interaction. In addition, he studied dolphin communications with ethologist John Lilly, explored metalanguage or the nonverbal features of human languages, theorized on the nature of schizophrenia (which he viewed as the failure of individuals to participate effectively in the metalinguistic levels accompanying all human conversation), and treated schizophrenic patients.

For her part, Catherine’s mother, Margaret Mead, provided American women with guidance and inspiration, serving as one of the few popular role models for intelligent, aspiring professional women. Mead aided women by clarifying the interaction of cultural and biological determinants in gender formation. She encouraged women to enter professions while simultaneously celebrating their maternal roles.

Context

With a Daughter’s Eye is a personal testimony from Catherine Bateson of her mother’s life as a woman who successfully combined motherhood with a thriving professional career. Furthermore, it provides an intimate portrait of a woman who provided a role model for generations of American women who had seen their own lives as narrowly proscribed by the culture in which they lived.

Mead served American women in other ways. In her early anthropological studies Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), Sex and Temperament (1935), and Male and Female (1949), she explored the roles of biological and cultural determinants in the formation of personality, finding that traits considered masculine in one culture (aggression, for example) could just as easily be considered feminine in another. Mead, in collaboration with Bateson, developed theories of the formation of temperament or personality types within cultures.

Mead’s career was initially aided by the farsighted Franz Boas, the professor at Columbia University who was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology. Boas shrewdly recognized that some aspects of culture were more accessible to female researchers than male ones, and nearly half of the anthropology graduate students trained at Columbia during his long tenure were women. Boas sent Mead to the field with instructions for studying adolescent behavior. Mead, equipped with theoretical grounding but little practical knowledge, developed many of the techniques of modern fieldwork. She was, for example, one of the first to implement the participant observer technique in her work in Samoa. In Bali with Bateson, she exploited photographs and films as methods for researching nonverbal communications, when photography had only been used to illustrate anthropology books.

With several other anthropologists, Mead worked for the United States government during World War II in various intelligence capacities. Her contributions to the war effort included studying and lecturing about the differences between British and American culture in order to smooth over relations, analyzing the eating habits of Americans, and describing American society in And Keep Your Powder Dry (1942). She played a principal role with Ruth Benedict in the development of national character studies, which evolved as a means of categorizing and exploring the fundamental characteristics of complex nations about which little was known. Mead and others developed a new methodology for studying cultures in which it was not feasible to do fieldwork. They called it “culture at a distance.”

Mead was also instrumental in popularizing anthropology, largely through her best-selling books of which Coming of Age in Samoa was the first. From 1962 until her death, she wrote a column with colleague Rhoda Metraux for Redbook magazine which was read by millions of American women. While she used her column as a forum for her own ideas, she also read the letters that she received as a means of remaining current regarding the concerns and opinions of her readers.

The highly respected Mead was widely mourned when she died of cancer in 1978. Her achievements in anthropological technique and theory, her broadening of the perception of gender, her government work (which included intelligence activities and congressional testimony against nuclear weapons and global pollution), and her tireless services to American women were evidence of her remarkable energy and ambition.

Bibliography

Bateson, Mary Catherine. “Continuities in Insight and Innovation: Toward a Biography of Margaret Mead.” American Anthropologist 82 (June, 1980): 270-277. Bateson describes her reasons for publishing her highly personal recollections of her mother in an attempt to record the way Mead’s personal and professional lives were intertwined. Bateson views her study of her parents as anthropology, and indeed she functions as a participant observer in the culture of their lives.

Howard, Jane. Margaret Mead: A Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. Howard, a journalist, used as sources interviews with colleagues, friends, and acquaintances of Mead. Although the biography is informative, it is flawed by her uncritical use of her sources and the inclusion of unsubstantiated or gratuitous observations. Contains an index, bibliographies, and illustrations.

Lipset, David. Gregory Bateson: The Legacy of a Scientist. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1980. In the first section, Lipset provides a thorough biographic treatment of Bateson, while the second section is devoted to a cogent analysis of Bateson’s rich intellectual and professional pursuits. Bateson’s intellectual theorizing is made readily accessible through Lipset’s capable analyses. Contains an index, a bibliography, and citations.

Mead, Margaret. Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years. New York: William Morrow, 1972. Mead described both her professional and her personal lives in this engaging autobiography, which is peppered with photographs of her life. Divided into three sections: Section 1 describes her early life, section 2 is a discussion of her fieldwork, and section 3 discusses her role as mother and grandmother.

Metraux, Rhoda. “Margaret Mead: A Biographical Sketch.” American Anthropolo-gist 82 (June, 1980): 262-269. In this opening article in an issue devoted exclusively to Mead, colleague Metraux provides a detailed yet concise biography of Mead. Includes a select bibliography.

Sahlins, Marshall. “Views of a Culture Heroine.” The New York Times Book Review, August 26, 1984, 1, 20-21. Anthropologist Sahlins provides an overview of Bate-son’s biography of her parents, as well as of Mead’s life and work in this extended book review.

Yans-McLaughlin, Virginia. “Margaret Mead.” In Women Anthropologists: A Biographical Dictionary, edited by Ute Gacs et al. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. This highly informative yet concise biography of Mead carefully chronicles her professional life. Includes a bibliography of primary and secondary sources.