Editing Ruth Benedict (section)

===Childhood===
Benedict was born Ruth Fulton in [[New York City]] on June 5, 1887, to Beatrice (Shattuck) and Frederick Fulton.<ref name="Young 2005">Young 2005</ref><ref name="Caffrey">Caffrey 1989.</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia.com |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/benedict-ruth-1887-1948 |title= Ruth Benedict 1887-1948}}</ref> Her mother worked in the city as a school teacher, and her father was a [[homeopathy|homeopathic]] doctor and surgeon.<ref name="Young 2005"/> Fulton loved his work and research, but they eventually led to his premature death, as he acquired an unknown disease during one of his surgeries in 1888.<ref name="Benedictsto">Benedict 1959: 97–112</ref> His illness caused the family to move back to [[Norwich, New York|Norwich]], New York, to the farm of Ruth's maternal grandparents, the Shattucks.<ref name="Caffrey"/> A year later, he died ten days after he had returned from a trip to [[Trinidad]] to search for a cure.<ref name="Benedictsto"/>

Beatrice Fulton was deeply affected by her husband's passing. Any mention of him overwhelmed her with grief; every March, she cried at church and in bed.<ref name="Benedictsto"/> Ruth hated her mother's sorrow and viewed it as a weakness. For Ruth, the greatest taboos were crying in front of people and showing expressions of pain.<ref name="Benedictsto"/> She reminisced, "I did not love my mother; I resented her cult of grief."<ref name="Benedictsto"/> The psychological effects on her childhood were thus profound, since "in one stroke she [Ruth] experienced the loss of the two most nourishing and protective people around her—the loss of her father at death and her mother to grief".<ref name="Caffrey"/>

As a toddler, she contracted [[measles]], which left her [[partial deafness|partially deaf]]; that was not discovered until she began school.<ref name="mead">{{cite book |author-last=Mead |author-first=Margaret |author-link=Margaret Mead |date=1977 |title=An anthropologist at work: writings of Ruth Benedict |publisher= Greenwood Press |isbn= 978-0-8371-9576-6}}</ref> Ruth had a fascination with death as a young child. When she was four years old, her grandmother took her to see an infant that had recently died. Upon seeing the dead child's face, Ruth claimed that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.<ref name="Benedictsto"/>

At seven, Ruth began to write short verses and to read any book that she could get her hands on. Her favorite author was [[Jean Ingelow]], and her favorite readings were ''A Legend of Bregenz'' and ''The Judas Tree''.<ref name="Benedictsto"/> Through writing, she gained approval from her family. Writing was her outlet, and she wrote with an insightful perception about human reality. For example, in her senior year of high school, she wrote a piece, "Lulu's Wedding (A True Story)", in which she recalled the wedding of a family serving-girl. Instead of romanticizing the event, she revealed the true unromantic arranged marriage that Lulu went through because the man would take her even though he was much older.<ref name="Caffrey"/>

Although her fascination with death started at an early age, she continued to study how death affected people throughout her career. In her book ''Patterns of Culture'', Benedict shows how the [[Puebloan peoples|Pueblo]] culture dealt with grieving and death. She describes in the book that individuals may deal with reactions to death, such as frustration and grief, differently from one another. Societies all have social norms that they follow; some allow more expression in dealing with death, such as mourning, but other societies do not permit its acknowledgement.<ref name="Young 2005"/>