Margaret Mead Answers

Abstract Mead reached her largest audience through her monthly column in Redbook magazine, which ran from 1962 to Mead’s death in 1978. Examining the Redbook columns gives a good sense of Mead’s spiritual life and social ethics in her prime years. Religion was not a major theme in the columns, but it cropped up in surprising ways. The Redbook pieces also shed light on Mead’s relationship with Rhoda Metraux, who co-authored them and edited the three book collections drawn from the columns. Additionally, looking at the letters Mead received during these years shows the impact she had on her audience. By 1970, she was getting fifteen pounds of mail every day. People believed that they knew her through her media presence, and they trusted her enough to ask her practically anything. In some ways, she came to function almost as a clergywoman, making prophetic pronouncements, receiving confessions, and dispensing pastoral advice. Ironically, she came only late and reluctantly to acceptance of the idea that women could be clergy, and the slow evolution of her thinking on this subject is most clearly seen in one of the Redbook columns.