Masculinity and Fathering in Jamaica

Patricia Anderson

• Publisher: The University of the West Indies Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9789766408381

Why do many Jamaican men acknowledge the importance of love, but also believe that men have the right to physically discipline their partners? How far does fathering become a journey of personal self-development? What happens to "outside children" when the father also has children at home? Why do fathers believe that they must toughen their sons? These are some of the questions which are carefully explored in this groundbreaking study of Jamaican fathers. The study departs from the tradition of Caribbean family research in which the focus has usually been placed on women and on households and instead gives men the opportunity to speak for themselves. Unlike the familiar emphasis on low-income households, this new study interviewed men across a range of social classes and within different community contexts. As a result, the impact of harsh economic conditions is unmistakable in limiting the ability of Jamaican men to translate their fathering commitment into active and continuing involvement.

Across social classes and communities, Jamaican men share a common cultural conception of what is required to be a good father. However, they are also tied to definitions of hegemonic masculinity which emphasize male dominance and virility, so that domestic conflict may be inevitable, and men's aspirations to be good fathers may become imperilled. Given the existence of these countervailing values, there is a struggle to find a reasonable fit. The study concludes that it is possible for Jamaican men to be good fathers but bad husbands.

1.

Afro-Caribbean Family Structure and Gender Relations

The distinctiveness of Afro-Caribbean families and the diversity in conjugal patterns captured the attention of social scientists and historians from the middle of the last century, generating a body of research which articulated questions concerning the basic structure of these societies, as well as their origins. The ensuing debates shaped Caribbean sociology for several decades, as researchers tried to establish whether diversity implied a necessary pluralism, or whether societies achieved integration and stability through a shared value system which cut across social classes and racial groups. Also important was the question of whether these variations should be traced to the disruptive experience of plantation slavery or were expressions of an enduring African inheritance. The major research traditions diverged in relation to whether theorists argued that social groups were distinguished by different values and social institutions, or whether they sought to identify a common value system despite variations in behaviour linked to social class and environment. The first approach was strongly advanced by Michael G. Smith (1962, 1965), who articulated the elements of the plural society framework. Scientists who argued for the existence of a common value system adhered to a basic structural-functional model of society and included generations of distinguished researchers, starting with Raymond Smith (1956), Edith Clarke ([1957] 1999), George Roberts (1957) and Lloyd Braithwaite (1960).

These two schools provided different interpretations of the undeniable diversity in family structures, but they were united in their emphasis on the household as the basic unit of analysis, from which inferences concerning the structure of society were derived. However, there was another vibrant stream of research, which took as its starting point the individual actor, focusing on normative frameworks, identity and human action. These researchers tended to be social anthropologists, who immersed themselves in the lives of small communities, and whose efforts were directed at identifying the systems of meaning which guided their actors. The studies which emerged from this tradition often engaged with male peer groups, in contrast to the structural-functional model with its focus on household structure and composition. Some of these researchers confined their theorizing to their specific actors and community, while others sought to identify and articulate principles underlying societal organization. Although several valuable studies were conducted from this perspective starting in the late 1960s, the Caribbean academic community tended to treat them as isolated products and made limited efforts to integrate or build on their conclusions. Where these research findings may have achieved greater visibility, it was often in rebuttal, articulated by a new generation of women’s studies scholars who rejected the images of women that emerged from this theorizing about gender roles. Nonetheless, commonalities may be clearly seen between the findings of these early studies of Caribbean males, and the questions which have been pursued more extensively since the 1980s in the growth of men’s studies on the international stage.

This chapter seeks to provide an overview of the issues which have been analysed and contested in the research on the Caribbean family and on gender roles, in an effort to situate the findings from the present study of Jamaican fathers. In this review, the objective is not to replicate the comprehensive accounts provided by earlier writers (for example, R.T. Smith 1956, 1973; Barrow 1996), but rather to extract the agreements related to men and the family. Research from a structural perspective has been more extensive than studies which focused on individual action and ideology, but to some extent, similar topics have been explored in both approaches, although the causal explanations may have varied. This overview focuses on some of these specific topics and summarizes the general agreements and disagreements in the literature. The chapter concludes with a look at the current empirical data for some of the indicators on which researchers have generally relied in the study of Afro-Caribbean families.

Research Concerns and Overarching Themes

The issues and themes which have engaged the attention of Caribbean researchers may be grouped for convenience into seven major areas:

1. Sexuality and family-building
2. Outside children
3. Domestic roles and gender relations
4. Domestic conflict and violence
5. Men’s family bonds
6. Peer-group attachment
7. Fathering and socialization

These groupings are subject to a degree of arbitrariness and inevitably may do some violence to the logical interconnections between specific topics. However, they serve to provide some coherence to this large and complex body of research, and also establish a context for understanding the issues which were pursued in the present study.

Sexuality and Family-Building

If there is any single dominant feature in Afro-Caribbean family systems, which has been identified by researchers from different traditions, it is the existence of multiple conjugal unions, in which both men and women participate over time. This is closely linked to other characteristics and outcomes, such as a range of conjugal types, a strong emphasis on virility and demonstrated fertility, early sexual initiation and entry to childbearing and different sets of children within a family. The historical difficulty in maintaining a conjugal bond has often been traced to the disruptive effects of plantation slavery and the separation of partners by slave owners, since men, women and children were sold as commodities to different sugar estates and markets (Frazier 1939; Patterson 1967). Also, the sheer loss of life among enslaved Africans cannot be overlooked when accounting for the abbreviated length of conjugal unions. In contrast to those writers who placed a major emphasis on the destructive impact of slavery, other theorists sought to show that Caribbean families displayed similarities to family patterns among particular African tribes before their forced removal from the continent and subjection to plantation slavery (Herskovits 1941; Herskovits and Herskovits 1947). Distinguishing features such as weak conjugal bonds and the close mother-child relationships were classified as retentions and reinterpretations of African culture. In addition, cultural principles were argued to demonstrate a level of continuity with the original societies (Sidney Mintz and Price 1976).

Demographic historians such as Higman (1976, 1978) and Craton (1979) mined the records of the sugar plantations in an effort to establish how far the families of slaves (both Creole and African-born) exhibited a tendency towards nuclearity. A careful summary of this literature, as well as its different threads, has been provided by Barrow (1996). While acknowledging the difficulties which historians encountered in their efforts to re-create a picture of family life under slavery, she applauded their perseverance in investigating “how slaves re-created and remodelled family ideology and practice, calling on their African heritage, and making choices and decisions, even within the severe economic constraints of slavery” (Barrow 1996, 261).

Although emancipation may have reduced these external shocks to conjugal unions, the accounts of family life continuing into the twentieth century documented a system in which many unions remained fragile, and conjugal alternatives included nonresidential visiting unions, residential common-law unions and legal marriage. This pattern has also been called “progressive mating”, as a nonresidential union was usually the starting point for sexual relationships and family-building, with legal marriage being the culmination. However, these alternatives were not always pursued in sequence. More casual visiting relationships were often conducted in tandem with co-residential unions, resulting in what has generally been referred to as “outside relationships” and “outside children”. Although males were more active in pursuing multiple relationships, these were also an option for some women, and the practice was evident across social classes (Henriques 1953; Chevannes 2006).

The consternation which British social workers expressed in the 1940s when they viewed Caribbean family patterns and what they regarded as social disarray and promiscuity is frequently cited in studies of the Jamaican family (R.T. Smith 1982; Barrow 1996). Following the labour riots which spread throughout the Caribbean in 1938, driven by the Great Depression, colonial social workers such as Thomas Simey travelled to the Caribbean with the assignment to design policies for social upliftment, based on the mandate of the 1945 West India Royal Commission Report (also referred to as the Moyne Commission Report). They sought solutions to what was perceived as social disorganization, expressed in loose family relationships and weak parenting (Simey 1946; R.T. Smith 1982; Barrow 2001). This approach, rooted in an assessment of social pathology, foreshadows the views expressed in the later Moynihan Report on Black Families in the United States (Moynihan 1965).

The foundation work for research on the Jamaican family may be identified as a landmark study by Edith Clarke (My Mother Who Fathered Me [1957] 1999), in which she systematically explored the impact of the economic environment on the structure and functioning of Jamaican families in three diverse communities. One of these selected communities depended on seasonal low-wage employment from the sugar industry, with the attendant inflows and outflows of migrant male workers. Clarke traced the links between the weak economic base, the transient population, and the unstable conjugal unions which men and women established over the period. In comparison, the two peasant farming communities showed a more predictable progression from visiting unions to co-residential unions, although the more prosperous community of Orange Town had larger proportions of couples who established legal marriages. Similar patterns emerged from George Cumper’s analysis of household data from the 1943 Population Census (Cumper 1958). By selecting enumeration districts which represented both a peasant community and a community dependent on sugar estate employment, he showed that in the peasant community, the common-law union tended to be a transitional form, with men and women moving along the expected route to legal marriage with increasing age. This was contrasted with the sugar estate communities, with their dependence on casual work and migrant labour. Here, the common-law union was the predominant form, unlikely to progress to legal marriage, or even to endure past childbearing. He concluded that in the peasant community, economic relationships strengthened the position of the father within the family, whereas in sugar-dependent areas, economic relationships coincided with family relationships only to a limited extent. Other research by Henriques, although confined to the eastern parish of Portland, showed that multiple unions were more likely to be found in the town, linked to the less settled conditions of employment in Port Antonio (Henriques 1953, 96). He further noted that polygamy, defined as the maintenance of two separate households (“twin households” [155]), was more common among migratory sugar estate workers, as well as among the upper classes.

While these writers regarded the economic environment as providing the context that shaped family life in different types of communities, a somewhat different approach was pursued by researchers who viewed the economy as generating the need for adaptive behaviour for some men and families. This interpretation was advanced by Hyman Rodman (1959) and Hymie Rubenstein (1980), who argued that the values attached to a social institution such as the family could be stretched to accommodate the realities which were available. Rodman (1963) pursued this analysis by formulating the concept of a lower-class value stretch to suggest that while the lower-class person did not abandon the general values of the society, it was possible to also develop an alternative set of values. According to this model, a nonlegal union and legally illegitimate children could be desirable, even though greater value was attached to legal marriage and legitimate offspring. Rodman acknowledged that this possibility had been identified by Lloyd Braithwaite (1957), who argued that there could be a duality of allegiance to values.

From a similar perspective, and based on his research in a Vincentian community in 1969, Rubenstein concluded that economic stagnation and resource inequalities generated the need for a variable and malleable pattern of mating and parenting. By maintaining flexibility in conjugality and parenting responsibilities, villagers were able to respond to changes in their economic situation and labour market opportunities. Rubenstein also reported that nonresidential unions showed a general absence of well-defined rights and responsibilities in relation to issues such as male sexual exclusiveness, domestic support from the female and economic support from the male. He observed that while these unions provided flexibility, in the absence of rights and responsibilities, they tended to be short lived.

Over the next two decades, social researchers confirmed and elaborated on Clarke’s finding that there were class-differentiated patterns in the prevalence of different types of conjugal unions and their stability, and debated whether these demonstrated an orderly sequence. Despite a general agreement on the patterns, there were wide differences among theorists in the interpretations which they assigned, and in particular, the conclusions which they derived regarding the basic structure of Caribbean society. Plural society theory, as advanced by M.G. Smith, saw this as evidence that the different social sections of the society subscribed to different social institutions. In contrast, those who were guided by a structural-functional model, such as R.T. Smith, argued that despite social class variation, there was a common value system and ideology undergirding conjugal choices and family life.

The recognition of this conjugal diversity led researchers in several directions. One of the prolific streams revolved around the question of how far conjugal union types should be used as the basis for classifying households, with several elaborate schemes being advanced to describe the many variations in household groupings based on their composition. The limitations to this approach were eventually accepted, based on the recognition that family and household were very different concepts (Solien 1960), and that the census-based approach to identifying households should be acknowledged for its inability to identify the functioning family unit. This agreement was later summarized by R.T. Smith (1982) in a statement that the boundaries of Caribbean households were highly permeable and did not confine domestic relations within their ambit. He noted that domestic activities such as childcare, the acquisition and preparation of food, washing, sleeping and sexual activities often occurred across household boundaries. In Barrow’s review of this extensive body of research, which equated families with households, she observed that functioning male partners and fathers who lived elsewhere often remained invisible, obscured by the focus on nuclear families and households (Barrow 1996).

Also important was the question of how far the different conjugal types should be ranked as patterns exclusive to different social classes, or whether they were part of a common system, with conjugal types varying in their representation across social classes. A related query was whether involvement in different conjugal arrangements followed a life-cycle pattern. The extent to which the life cycle of the Caribbean family showed a swing between consanguine and conjugal emphases was documented by Herman McKenzie and Hermione McKenzie (1971), based on a careful analysis of census data. This showed that during her early child-bearing years, the young mother was likely to depend on the support of her domestic group, but as childbearing progressed and the male partner was able to increase his economic support, the conjugal family was likely to emerge strongly.

Whereas the early family studies tended to emphasize the degree of separation between social classes, viewing different union types as symbols of status variation, this perspective became considerably modified by the 1970s. With the benefit of data derived from genealogies and in-depth interviews, researchers acknowledged that all three types of unions were to be found across social classes. It was agreed that the tendency to establish legal marriages was greater among families who enjoyed higher social status, while common-law unions and visiting unions were more frequently found among those at lower socio-economic levels (Alexander 1977; Douglass 1992; R.T. Smith 1988). Smith further observed that while a man’s enhanced occupational status led to the expectation of marriage and upward social mobility, it also increased the likelihood that he would engage in outside unions.

The fact that nonlegal unions were often entered across social classes had been earlier highlighted by Henriques (1953) who reported that among the upper and middle classes, mistresses were usually drawn from the lower classes. This was summarized by R.T. Smith (1982, 121) as one of the principles of the West Indian system of kinship marriage and family. He identified the pattern as “a mating system which enjoins marriage with status equals, and nonlegal unions with women of lower status”.

Caribbean censuses and surveys have routinely shown a pattern of age variations associated with different conjugal types, with younger persons more likely to be engaged in nonresidential mating and older persons more likely to report being legally married. Formal marriage was often preceded by child-bearing. Where information on the age at marriage was obtained through surveys, it was also found that, compared with other types of union, marriage was likely to be entered at a more advanced age (Roberts and Sinclair 1978). This has traditionally been explained as related to the belief that marriage was only appropriate in a situation of economic security, and ideally, one that allowed the wife to abstain from employment outside the home (Henriques 1953; E. Clarke [1957] 1999; Stycos and Back 1964). In addition, the progression towards legal marriage was shown to be associated with church membership, with Fischer (1974, 33) observing that in rural Jamaica, “the relationship between respectability, status and church membership is fairly clear”. In their survey of marital careers among lower-income men and women in Trinidad, Voydanoff and Rodman (1978, 157) found evidence that the sequencing of alternative marital unions showed a general movement towards more stable relationships. However, they concluded that, given the considerable diversity, it was not possible to say that the typical pattern was one of movement from visiting unions (“friending”) to common-law unions (“living”), and concluding with marriage to the same...