Page "Margaret Mead" Paragraph 9

Her third and longest-lasting marriage ( 1936 – 1950 ) was to the British Anthropologist Gregory Bateson with whom she had a daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, who would also become an anthropologist.

Her pediatrician was Benjamin Spock early in his career.

Spock's subsequent writings on child rearing incorporated some of Mead's own practices and beliefs acquired from her ethnological field observations which she shared with him ; in particular, breastfeeding on the baby's demand rather than a schedule.

She readily acknowledged that Gregory Bateson was the husband she loved the most.

She was devastated when he left her, and she remained his loving friend ever after, keeping his photograph by her bedside wherever she traveled, including beside her hospital deathbed.