My interest in this book came from reading Euphoria by Lily King, a fictionalized account of the anthropological field trip in New Guinea in the 1930s where Reo Fortune and Margaret Mead, then husband and wife, met Gregory Bateson, whom Margaret left Reo for. Although King states in her introduction that the novel is based on this trip, the names of the characters in the novel are fictional, and the author states that she is taking liberties with the factual account of the trip. I showed King's [...]

For me, this has been the summer of reading about Margaret Mead. In this memoir, Mary Bateson shares the personal details of her life, and how she came to know Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, her famous scientist parents, while growing up alongside them, and how they, in turn, influenced her. She is able to describe them with a distance gained through maturity and wisdom. I enjoyed seeing the family photos Mary includes which reflect the love Margaret shared with Gregory and Mary. This is a m [...]

A mixture of a memoir/biography of her parents (Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson), and an examination of their work and theories, this was a challenging read, even with an undergraduate degree in anthropology. I could feel my brain stretching as I was reading it! At the same time it was a fascinating insight into the lives of some intriguing personalities. If you read the novel Euphoria by Lily King you will get a chance to read about the real life events which inspired it. I've had this on my [...]

I read this because I had read Lily King's Euphoria which is based on Bateson's parents Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. It is OK.

An outstanding memoir/biography. I highly recommend it!

This was a book club selection, and I probably would not have chosen it myself. The daughter of two famous anthropologists, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, had a very unconventional upbringing in a series of extended families. Repressing any anger she might have felt when her parents were away, she seems on the whole to have thrived from her experiences. She became an anthropologist herself, carving out her identity in a different area, Middle Eastern linguistics, while benefiting from conver [...]

I previously read Lily King's EUPHORIA, loosely based on a portion of Margaret Mead's life. That drew me to read more on this fascinating & renowned anthropologist. I studied her in school, but that was LONG ago. With A DAUGHTER'S EYE is a memoir/biography by the only child of Margaret and her husband, Gregory Bateson. Thought the daughter tried to give equal billing to each parent, Margaret is obviously the higher achiever of the two. Imagine being raised under the influence of these two (u [...]

The author provided lots of background and story into the lives and marriage(s) of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. The author was born late in 1939 but already Margaret was decades ahead of hospital norms as well as that of society. Interesting MM thoughts on childbearing and childrearing. A child of divorce, the author craftily wove her way through her parents marriage, separation and eventual divorce as well as the future relationships of both parents. After reading "Euphoria" a novel based [...]

A look-back at growing up with famous anthropologist parents, the dynamics changed when Catherine, herself, decided to join the field. Although she did not travel to New Guinea, Samoa, or Bali with her mother, Catherine learned at a young age to be respectful of and adaptable to different cultures. Margaret and Gregory divorced when Catherine was young, but they continued to work together throughout their lives. It seemed that Catherine walked a daughter/colleague tightrope at times, yet she lov [...]

For the most part, I enjoyed Bateson's reflections about what it was like to grow up as the child of such extraordinary and famous parents. If I were an Anthropologist, or interested in the founding if this discipline, I would have enjoyed the book quite a bit more. Without this interest, I found that the portions of the book where she described differences in her parents' theoretical models and perspectives dragged. I did enjoy the sections that were more simply focused on the mother-child or f [...]

If you have an interest in anthropology or social theory, this is a really interesting read. The author is the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson (whom I'd never heard of before reading it bad anthropology student!) and she traces her relationship with them -- both as a family and as colleagues. Both of them did a lot of work on social systems and it carried over into how they interacted with each other and with their daughter. The book presumes a certain amount of inherent fascinatio [...]

As part of the One Book One Valley initiative in my community which focused on the novel Euphoria by Lily King, Mary Catherine Bateson, the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, was invited to speak about her parents' lives and the challenges of aging. Bateson is also an accomplished anthropologist and writer, and she was a delightful speaker. This memoir of her parents was an interesting read, but there were sections I skimmed that were tedious to me. If you are interested in the lives [...]

Interesting memoir by Margaret Mead's daughter describing her life in relationship to her parents. Cathy Bateson's father was Gregory Bateson who was also an anthropologist who was apparently well known. Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead stopped living together when Cathy Bateson was about two so life with her parents had two very different threads. Both parents were very engaged with her, giving Cathy a remarkable childhood.

Be prepared - Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of Margaret Mead and fellow anthroupologist Gregory Bateson - do break the ultimate taboop, grown daughter (barely) and father do have sex in a tent in, I believe, Santa Cruz, Ca. Yuck - but they lived to tell the tale with quintessential ethnographic, detached participant/observer self-reporting .I am suprised Margaret didn't kill Bateson, anyway. Now that would have been "natural"!

I finished Euphoria and had to learn more about Margaret Mead. This looked like the best bet to cover Mead's life and shed light on how much was fiction in Euphoria. Bateson eventually became an anthropologist herself and had a unique view of her parents. A bit scholarly at times, but overall satisfying to see both of her famous parents' lives over the years.

Margaret Mead was her mother and Gregoy Bateson her father--so her life was remarkable and unusual. Interesting book, but wordy. This was when I got a floater in my eye and have been sad about it ever since.

Recursive writing centered on the figure of the daughter, not a biography, or a history of anthropology, but rather a coming to terms with the loss of parents. (Anthropological critique comes in at the end, a welcome contextualization of the book for non specialists, though I wanted more).

More about how Mary was raised than about her mother. Not what I expected. Too social worky. Will read about Margaret Mead and Bateson and their their experience in New Guinea. I did not finish the book and may not finish it.

I respect Bateson and am appreciative that she showed the complexity of her parents versus the oversimplified and overly glorified version of other biographers.

I have read several books by Margaret Meade, so it was interesting to read her daughter's thoughts.