Margaret Mead explains why the family was entering a brave new world in this 1959 film

Huston Smith (1919-2016) was one of the preeminent 20th-century scholars of religion and comparative philosophy in the US. His distinguished career, which included being MIT’s first professor of philosophy, also comprised stints as a presenter on public access television, creating a series of programmes that interrogated questions of spirituality, meaning and belief. Among these was the 1959 programme The Search for America, in which Huston interviewed prominent thinkers to discover ‘moral answers to 16 of the most basic public and private issues that Americans face’.

In this instalment, Smith seeks to better understand the family as a personal, national and human institution amid Cold War tensions and technological change. First, he speaks with the legendary US anthropologist Margaret Mead at her office at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In a riveting discussion, Mead characterises the moment as deeply family-focused, with couples getting married younger than at any other time in recent memory, and with fathers more than ever involved with childcare. Huston then talks to Bertram Beck, a leader in the field of social work, who details the ways in which changing family structures create both tensions and opportunities. Viewed today, the perspectives offered are fascinating, frequently shifting between conservative and progressive, shortsighted and prescient.