Abstracts Derek Freeman based his criticism of Margaret Mead's claim of sexual freedom for adolescent girls in Samoa on two premises. The first—that there was a “cult of virginity”—has been disproved by scholars. The second—that the low incidence of premarital pregnancy precluded sexual freedom—has not been adequately addressed. Sexual freedom and a low incidence of pregnancy were not mutually exclusive. The key lies in consideration of what counted as sex in Samoa at the time.
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Nicole J. Grant (1995) studied this question.
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