Mary Catherine Bateson Dies at 81; Anthropologist on Lives of Women
After a well-documented childhood as the daughter of Margaret Mead, she earned her own renown with a book on women’s lives that became a touchstone to feminists.
Mary Catherine Bateson at her home in New Hampshire in 2010. In “Composing a Life,” about the stop-and-start nature of women’s lives, she wrote of life “as an improvisatory art.”Credit.Trent Bell for The New York Times
Published Jan. 14, 2021Updated Jan. 19, 2021
Mary Catherine Bateson, a cultural anthropologist who was the author of quietly groundbreaking books on women’s lives and who as the only child of Margaret Mead had once been one of the most famous babies in America died on Jan. 2 in Lebanon, N.H. She was 81.