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Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap

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Adolescence is a time in which the behaviors of childhood are abandoned and the roles of adulthood are taken up. This book describes the different ways in which youths arrive at their adult roles.

In very stable, unchanging cultures youths learn from both their parents and their grandparents how to act as adults. These are postfigurative cultures, thus named because they look back to the past for guidance. Many native cultures were postfigurative before they gained access western culture via radio and TV.

Societies which exist in a state of change are called cofigurative cultures. Many western cultures in the twentieth century are examples of this. In this circumstance both youths and adults learn from their peers. Much of the past must be abandoned as new circumstances arrive demanding new behaviors.

Mead proposes that a third, prefigurative culture may emerge in the future. This type of society is subject to continued, radical change. In it adults learn from their children. Youths have the adaptability to cope with rapid change. They must 'make up' their behavior as they go along. Peers can help but even they remain largely ignorant of 'what is right' as change is so rapid.

This book was written just after the counter-culture of the 1960s. At the time it must have seemed that the world was going to experience an alarming rate of change. As a result of the baby boom youth seemed to be taking over the world. Prefigurative culture never eventuated but of course that is not to say it can never happen.