"Margaret Mead": Quilt Art by Rebekka Seigel

"We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet."

The tenth woman in my paper doll series honors a woman who made anthropology a study of women and children as well as men. Margaret opened our eyes to the ways of child rearing around the world and how they compared to the practices in America. Because of her research and her relationship with Doctor Benjamin Spock, breast feeding was embraced here instead of the bottle feeding that was thought to be the best and most convenient way for mothers to feed their babies.

The center of the quilt is a piece of fabric that my mother brought me from a trip to Hawaii. The ethnic imagery on this fabric became the centerpiece for a quilt that is meant to reflect the cultures that Margaret studied. The areas surrounding each one of her outfits represent pages from her copious notebooks that she kept for all of her research. Each page reflects things of importance to the culture she was studying or to the job that she had in her long and interesting career.