The absence of anything that might be called initiation rites that ushered boys into manhood is due to the fact that in Polynesia a boy left the company of women and was accepted into association with men at weaning, when the food tabu that required men to eat apart from women was laid upon him. The Polynesian boy became a man when he began to eat the food of men, not at adolescence.3

3Handyn/an/an/an/an/an/a, , 223.