Masculinity and Fathering in Jamaica

By Patricia Anderson

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of the West Indies Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9789766408381

Patricia Anderson

Patricia Anderson, now retired, was professor of applied sociology, the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica

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Introduction

Despite the position of dominance which men enjoy in Jamaican society, there has been little examination of the situation of men in Jamaican families, and particularly of men’s own perspectives on their roles. This apparent invisibility is itself related to the societal acceptance of male dominance in several spheres, so there has been limited recognition of the need to explore the factors shaping male behaviour, and to examine gendered ways of acting. A further constraint derives from the fact that in research on the Afro-Jamaican family, the analytic focus has usually been on the household or on women, with a failure to question the extent or the character of the imputed male absence from the domestic sphere.

Over the last two decades, research on the attitudes and behaviour of Jamaican males has greatly expanded, in so far as they are related to their involvement in crime and violence (Harriott 2003), sexual risk-taking (Chevannes 1992, 2002; W. Bailey et al. 1998) and educational underachievement (Leo-Rhynie 1996; B. Bailey 1997; Figueroa 2004; Gayle and Bryan 2019). These studies have looked at the socialization patterns of males, as well as the community influences which lead to negative or destructive behaviour (O. Gray 2004; Gayle et al. 2004). However, the so-called average Jamaican father has received little scholarly attention, although his actions are argued to have wide repercussions which include poor socialization and neglect of children, leading to a spiral of social breakdown.

The present work seeks to build on the slim but growing body of research on Jamaican fathers which began in the mid-1980s, and which shifted the lens to explore directly with men their own systems of meaning and their behaviour. This undertaking represents an attempt to replicate and expand an earlier study of fathers conducted in 1991 in four Jamaican communities by the Caribbean Child Development Centre at the University of the West Indies, with the support of the International Development Research Centre in Canada. The report from this early research undertaking by Janet Brown, Anderson and Chevannes (1993) was never published, and the findings became partially disseminated only by incorporation into edited collections on the Caribbean family or on children. The current study also extends the research on gender socialization in the Caribbean conducted since the early 1990s (Chevannes and Mitchell-Kernan 1992; Janet Brown and Chevannes 1998; W. Bailey, Branche and Le Franc 1998; Chevannes 2001).

The findings from the first investigation of Jamaican fathers were faithful to the body of information which had been accumulated on the Afro-Jamaican family since the foundation period of Caribbean sociology in the 1950s. Based on men’s testimony, this study, which was entitled The Contribution of Caribbean Men to the Family, documented the continuing pattern in which men had different sets of children linked to the cycle of conjugal unions in which they had engaged. It further showed that the degree of interaction between fathers and their children varied according to whether these children lived with them, or whether they lived separately. Where this first Fathers Study broke new ground was in the unmistakable finding that men identified strongly with their father role, and this commitment tended to be part of a developmental pattern, with childbearing having different meanings as men moved from young adulthood into maturity. The research project utilized both qualitative and quantitative techniques to explore gender relations, and it established that both men and women had gender-differentiated goals in rearing their boys and girls, so that many adult male characteristics could be traced to the expectations and practices of parents.

This early research project provided the impetus for the subsequent study of gender socialization conducted in three Caribbean countries in 1995 with support from UNICEF; the findings of this study were published by Janet Brown and Barry Chevannes (Janet Brown and Chevannes 1998; Chevannes 2001). Other researchers contributed to the development of this important subfield by delineating the attitudinal changes which emerged as boys moved into puberty (Branche 1998, 2001), and by focusing on the impact of early fatherhood on young males (W. Bailey et al. 1999b). However, there has been little further analysis of the role of fatherhood in male identity, apart from the popular observation that today’s fathers appeared to be doing more in several spheres of child-rearing, which had previously been the domain of women.

While the evidence of increasing male involvement in parenting was generally considered to be an encouraging societal trend, it left unanswered the question of the contradiction between men’s endorsement of fathering and their apparent stubborn resistance to total incorporation into a nuclear-type model of the family. The adoption of the husband-father role inherent in the Western nuclear family structure seemed to be an uneven process, and in general, a norm of manhood which emphasized virility and sexual freedom continued to be celebrated in practice and in popular culture (Hope 2006).

In undertaking this new study of men’s gender attitudes and family roles, it was necessary to address this apparent contradiction and to question whether it was possible for men to be good fathers but bad husbands. In other words, if fathering is central to the male identity, analysis should not start by assuming the existence of the husband-father nexus, but rather must examine these dimensions separately. It was recognized that in asking men to speak for themselves, the study should explore how they felt about children, how they felt about women – their partners, their daughters and their own mothers – and what they sought to achieve through their fathering activity. This recognition served to establish the framework for the current study, which assigns a central role to exploring definitions of masculinity among Jamaican men and seeks to relate fathering activity to these self-definitions.

The present study proposes a methodology for measuring two key dimensions of masculinity. These relate to fathering and to gender relations and are measured by two new scales: the father identity scale and the macho scale. The analysis traces the convergence of beliefs and attitudes across social classes, as well as the variations, and examines the extent to which these attitudes are articulated with individual assessments of fathering success and personal change. The study was designed around a survey of fathers in four Jamaican communities, which were selected in order to provide a range of socio-economic levels and community environments. Three communities were urban and one was semi-urban, situated in the hills of St Andrew above the main urban centre of Kingston. The low-income urban community is generally classified as an inner-city garrison community.¹ The semi-urban community and one of the urban communities had been previously surveyed in the 1991 Fathers Project.

A central plank in the present study is the finding that Jamaican men demonstrate attachment to two sets of masculinity values, which are described as fatherhood values and macho values. The fatherhood values centre on fathering identification and nurturing, and are measured by the Mandad Father Identity Scale (the mandad scale). The definitions of a good father which men advance, and which shape their own self-assessments, together with the principles and practices which they endorse with regard to child-rearing, provide the background to understanding how they measure their success in this area of social reproduction. The extent to which the experience of parenting has been a personal journey of self-development becomes clear from the self-reflections of fathers in these communities, as well as the links which they make with their own experiences of being fathered, whether well fathered or not very well fathered. While the process of fathering entails direct interaction with children, this may be strengthened, mediated or blocked by men’s relations with their partners and baby-mothers. The study therefore examined men’s general views on women, childbearing and gender roles, as encapsulated by the macho scale. Men’s endorsement of multiple sexual relationships and the expressed need to beget children, their views on the domestic division of labour, and the acknowledged sources of domestic conflict are all factors that contribute to the assessments which, in the final analysis, the men in these communities make of their lives and their success as fathers.

Given that the four communities in which the surveys were conducted were selected for the purpose of examining social class differences, this book seeks to first establish the wider context for understanding Jamaican family structure by providing an overview of the existing body of literature on the Afro-Caribbean family and gender relations. This is supplemented by recent data on national indicators, revealing the changes that have been observed over time. Readers may recognize similarities to the patterns which have been documented for African American communities, and in reflection, they may revisit the debates and causal explanations centring on the African inheritance, the destructive effects of slavery, and prolonged racial oppression and marginalization. The differences that may be observed within the Caribbean between Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean families should also be acknowledged.

Explorations of fathering involvement are derived from a newer stream of research, which takes as its starting point the question of fathering identity. Much of this burgeoning literature originated in the United States and Britain, and it linked the work of historians, social psychologists and sociologists. It is also closely tied to research on masculinity, which expanded beginning in the 1980s, as men’s studies carved out a field of its own. Chapter 2 provides an overview of masculinity research, while in chapter 3, an overview of research on fathering is provided. This is accompanied by a description of the measures which researchers have used to assess fathering identification and involvement. Chapter 4 summarizes the current body of Caribbean research on masculinity and fathering. The new Jamaican macho scale and the fatherhood scale (that is, the mandad scale), situated within these wider contexts, are described in chapter 5. This chapter also outlines the methodology guiding the Fathers Study, which combined community surveys with qualitative research. These chapters are followed by a description of the four Jamaican communities (chapter 6), as a backdrop to discussing the lives of our research participants. The substantive findings from the study are presented in chapters 7 through 11. The empirical findings are presented first, followed by a brief discussion of the wider literature, in an effort to situate the significant findings from this Jamaican study.

I also take the opportunity to share two excerpts from the first Fathers Study (The Contribution of Caribbean Men to the Family), which was conducted in 1991 and which has not seen the benefit of earlier publication. These two excerpts are contributed by Janet Brown, who was the project director, as well as a co-author of the report (1993). They describe some of the findings from the extensive community discussions which were central to that earlier research project, serving to further illuminate the topics pursued in the present study.

The concluding chapter seeks to pull together the threads of the argument, which is that Jamaican men cling to two sets of values which are inherently contradictory. Finding a fit is not readily predicted, and therefore, positive fathering is an uncertain outcome in this context.

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:

Sexuality and family-building

Outside children

Domestic roles and gender relations

Domestic conflict and violence

Men’s family bonds

Peer-group attachment

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 partner. From a similar perspective, Le Franc et al. (1994) examined multiple partnerships and union stability and longevity based on a national survey of Jamaican men and women between fifteen and forty years old conducted in 1992, concluding that marriage was not necessarily a terminal stage for many conjugal histories.

The stability of common-law unions was examined by Davenport (1961), who showed that nonlegal unions became more stable with increasing age and with the increase in the number of children which the mother had had. He concluded that the critical factors determining whether a common-law union would progress to legal marriage were economic security and a willingness to accept the legal obligations of marriage. An additional interpretation of this progression has been suggested by R.T. Smith (1988, 116), whose male informants indicated that marriage represented stability, being a Christian, and a conscious decision to renounce the sporting life and the pursuit of outside women. He noted that, in contrast, women tended to identify marriage with economic security and getting help with child rearing.

The value attached to virility by both men and women is also a familiar theme in the literature, and is one of the factors which directly contribute to the pattern of multiple unions. Across social classes, the main difference was reported to be the extent to which these patterns were openly acknowledged, or endorsed. Clarke’s study of family life in her selected rural communities provided an explicit comparison of attitudes towards sexuality and procreation. She reported that in the sugar estate community, sex was freely discussed; men enjoyed talking about their sexual prowess and the number of children they had fathered, and sexual activity was regarded as a normal part of adult and adolescent life. Clarke contrasted this with life in the middle-class community of Orange Grove, where casual sex relations were conducted in secret and marital infidelity was regarded as a serious breach of the social code, whether in wife or husband (E. Clarke [1957] 1999, 61).

Not only was sexual activity considered natural, it was considered unnatural not to have borne a child. Clarke summarized this as follows: Just as a woman is only considered ‘really’ a woman until she has borne a child, so the proof of a man’s maleness is the impregnation of a woman.… Parenthood is the hallmark of adulthood and normal, healthy living. There is a very common belief that a man knows, in the act of coition, that he has impregnated the woman (66). This is similar to the account given by Henriques (1953, 93) for Portland, where he explained that one of the factors which contributed to concubinage was the desire of both men and women to have a child. For the man, it is a test of his virility to make a woman pregnant, while the woman feels that she has not fulfilled her natural function if she has not had a child.

Continuities in the definition of masculinity are evident from Raymond Smith’s extensive research in Jamaica, utilizing genealogies collected between 1967 and 1972. He observed that male roles were not defined solely in terms of economic support. Rather, men are perceived to be strong, virile, active and domineering, as well as ‘responsible’. They are thought to be so by nature, not by education or effort (1988, 147). He summarized these patterns by remarking that masculinity was demonstrated by ‘manly’ activities with other men, by sexual conquest of many ‘girl friends’ and by having children all about (ibid.). The persistence of these patterns across social classes was further documented by Jack Alexander, based on detailed interviews conducted with middle-class Jamaican families between 1967 and 1969. After some discussion, his respondents argued that men in the middle class ‘run around’ as much as in the lower class but are careful to maintain proper appearances with a public home, middle-class wife and legal offspring, and private ‘outside’ relations with a lower-class mistress and illegal offspring (Alexander 1984, 162).

Among the elite Jamaican families whom Lisa Douglass (1992) enlisted in tracing genealogies, it was observed that men did not seem to experience any shame about nonmarital pregnancies; rather, it was a source of pride. It appeared that this was partly the reason why these powerful men acknowledged their outside children. Many of these so-called outside relationships occurred across social class lines, but generally men were expected to be discreet and not flaunt this activity. She noted that like other Jamaicans, the family elite viewed Jamaican men as having an unusual propensity for promiscuity. While they considered that sexual freedom was a man’s prerogative, they also viewed womanizing as an individual characteristic, so that infidelity was regarded as an unfortunate characteristic of some men, but not necessarily all men. Douglass remarked that while this explanation may have offered hope to elite women, nonetheless, as far as could be observed, outside relations occurred often enough, and in a sufficiently predictable way, to suggest that they are implicated in the structure and practice of Jamaican social hierarchy (Douglass 1992, 172).

In contrast to early Caribbean research centring on the household and the structure of the family, other researchers focused directly on males outside the ambit of households and sought to identify the sex roles that were characteristically male. The emphasis on virility was underscored by Peter Wilson’s research on the Colombian island of Providencia starting in 1958, and it contributed to his argument that there were two interlocking value systems which shaped behaviour. These were labelled as respectability and reputation (P. Wilson 1969, 1973). While respectability was described as a constellation of values which stratified a population into social classes, reputation was the basis on which individuals ranked each other based on their conduct with each other. Respectability was characterized by being a good provider for one’s family, being legally married and attending church, while reputation included sexual prowess and fathering children, being assertive when needed, being able to consume alcohol, and having money and being generous to family, girlfriends and male friends. In summarizing the body of earlier studies on the Caribbean family, Wilson concluded, Males must be virile, and their virility is especially manifested by sexual activities and their fathering of children. Virility or masculinity is the most highly valued quality that a man can possess (1969, 71). His own finding with regard to males establishing their reputation was that if there is a minimum requirement it is that a man should father children (1973, 150). He elaborated that a man who fathers many children by many women is considered stronger than one who has only a few.

Wilson’s further identification of respectability with women and reputation with males met with considerable disagreement by Caribbean scholars who argued that it was not an accurate picture of Caribbean women, as it implied a degree of female passivity (Sutton 1974; Besson 1993; Barrow 1998b). This was inconsistent with generally accepted images of Caribbean women. In addition, the identification of respectability traits with Europeans and reputational traits with West Indians has been strongly rejected. These criticisms were articulated by Tony Whitehead (1992), who elaborated on the respectability-reputation typology in his own research on a Jamaican sugar town between 1971 and 1983. He demonstrated that these categories were not sex-specific or class-specific, since all men were expected to exhibit both respectability and reputational traits.

In a comprehensive review of the literature on the sexual behaviour of Jamaicans, conducted for the National Family Planning Board, Barry Chevannes (1993, 9) summarized attitudes towards sexuality as follows: The prevailing attitude transmitted is that sex is ‘natural’.… ‘Natural’ is defined in two ways. One is that there is nothing strange about the sex drive and that while it may be controlled, it ought never to be repressed, on pain of ill health. The name for the sex drive is ‘nature’. The other meaning refers to heterosexual intercourse. From this perspective, homosexual relations were considered to be unnatural.

The ways in which cultural understandings shape sexual conduct were further explored by Chevannes and Mitchell-Kernan (1992), who identified four factors which contributed to the pattern of multiple relationships. These included the man’s need to demonstrate virility, his wish to exert power and reduce stress by maintaining a degree of independence in any one relationship, the desire for sexual variety, and perceived inadequacies in the primary union.

Early entry to childbearing often served as a handicap to the ability of teenage parents to independently care for their children, and these first offspring were frequently absorbed into the household of grandparents and were raised under their authority (E. Clarke [1957] 1999; Blake 1961). Although children were usually a source of pride to their young parents and provided a basis for claiming maturity, these initial unions were sometimes fragile and marked the beginning of a series of later unions. The fairly permissive attitudes towards early sexual activity, as well as the instability of many conjugal unions, contributed to an increasing diversity in the composition of Jamaican households which, over time, expanded to include different sets of children. While the mother or grandmother may have represented the stable core of the household, in most cases the father of the children, produced in youthful unions, remained outside the residential unit.

In research on two Jamaican fishing villages, Davenport (1961) remarked that the lower-class attitude to pregnancy and motherhood was that they were inevitable, with the girl being given a formalized upbraiding by her mother, in the light of the trouble and the expense that the birth would entail. In contrast, within the middle class, pregnancy was associated with marriage and co-residence. This is similar to the observation made by Henriques (1953) that generally when young girls became pregnant, the reaction in the lower-class home tended to vary based on whether the father was willing to assume the responsibility. This reflected economic considerations rather than moral concerns, given that girls were allowed considerable freedom to acquire sexual experience. There is also general agreement, as summarized by Patterson (1982), that in peasant communities, a distinction was made between legal and social legitimacy, as all children born of stable units were considered socially legitimate, with no stigma attached to them. Subsequent research has shown that the practice of early entry to sexual activity continues among lower-income communities (Chevannes and Mitchell-Kernan 1992; Jackson et al. 1998 Kempadoo and Dunn 2001; Gayle et al. 2004). The main motivating factors for early adolescent sexuality are usually identified as poor economic conditions, peer pressure to be sexually active to prove one’s gender identity, and gendered inequalities of power.

Although there is agreement among researchers on the pattern of early sexual activity, the picture of unregulated sexuality in rural communities does not seem warranted, based either on the oral histories by Chevannes and Mitchell-Kernan (1992) or on the oral autobiographies by Brodber (2003). Chevannes and Mitchell-Kernan pointed to the importance of parental approval when young persons started an intimate relationship, as they usually still lived in the family home. Brodber’s autobiographies were collected in the 1970s from black Jamaican men born around 1900, and in this pioneering work, which set out to refute the notion of Jamaican men as invisible, she shared the account of a former estate overseer (called Headman) born in Portland in 1895. He described the formal process by which two sets of parents would meet to discuss whether they agreed with the proposed match, as the prospective suitor was expected to approach the girl’s parents for permission first. In the same vein, a former prison warder, born in 1894 in the parish of St Thomas, complained about the permissiveness allowed to the younger generation. He explained that in bygone days, when a girl got pregnant, it was something of a consternation in the home.… If a girl got pregnant in a home, why, she would stay in there and hide away until she got delivered. Today, she walk up on the street with the stomach before them and they don’t care and think anything bad about it, how it looks to people (Brodber 2003, 65).

Edith Clarke’s community studies found that nonmarital births, as well as the domestic arrangements which absorbed the children of nonresidential unions, were freely discussed by lower-income men and women, in contrast to the silence or reticence of middle-class families. However, as Alexander (1984) pointed out, early childbearing and births out of wedlock also occurred among the middle class, despite their reluctance to publicly acknowledge this. He commented that illegitimacy was an improper but expected feature of middle-class Jamaican life.… Indeed, it is a structural feature of middle-class family life (Alexander 1984, 160). In turn, Douglass (1992) reported that births out of wedlock sometimes occurred among the elite Jamaican families which she studied in the mid-1980s, but these were often classified as youthful mistakes. If the birth was by one of the women in the family, the child may have grown up with the family or may have been given up for adoption.

Outside Children

In the Caribbean, children who are born out of wedlock are often referred to as outside children, although this term is not generally used in reference to children who are the product of a co-residential, but nonlegal union. Although it has been suggested that in the Caribbean, outside status is a signifier of paternal neglect and a disadvantaged childhood (Barrow 2010, 87), other studies have shown that the situation of outside children varies considerably and often depends on the social class of the father (Alexander 1984; Austin 1984; Douglass 1992). From this perspective, Austin observed that the derogatory categorization of children as outside was consistent with the description of family life among the middle classes as being conducted inside households, in contrast to the yard-based outside life of the working classes (Austin 1984, 156). In her ethnographic account of the family life of the Jamaican elite, Douglass reported that among these elite families, there was a general acknowledgement of the responsibility of fathers to provide financial support for outside children, although these children were classified as kin rather than family (1992, 187). In contrast to the patterns identified for elite families, Alexander (1984) indicated that among the Jamaican middle class, the terms of the kinship relationship, and specifically whether a man supported his outside children, were subject to personal preference. A similar pattern emerged from Raymond Smith’s genealogies derived from families in Guyana and Jamaica, where he noted the divergent fortunes of outside children, with some receiving education comparable to that of the legitimate offspring and others being relatively neglected (1988, 117–21).

Also important is the finding from Whitehead’s ethnographic work – namely, that avoidance of fathering children was generally regarded as a sign of irresponsibility – and his observation that both big and little men in Haversham take great pride in their outside as well as their inside children. Outside children are evidence of both success in sexual prowess and independence from the inside woman (T. Whitehead 1992, 119). This perspective echoes the finding of Lazarus-Black based on her research in Antigua between 1985 and 1986 (Lazarus-Black 1991), where she reported that Antiguan men were proud of their children and boasted about their number. They rarely denied paternity, even when taken to court for failure to support their children.

Earlier work by Davenport (1961) in two Jamaican fishing villages found that although children born out of wedlock generally grew up with the mother or her family, the father was expected to contribute to their support. While most men acknowledged these obligations and contributed when they could, others were completely remiss. Davenport further pointed out that when a man established a residential relationship with a partner who had children by previous unions, he was expected to contribute to the support of all the children in the household. The need to demonstrate that all children were being treated equally was sometimes a source of conflict in these families. The bias towards keeping the woman’s previous children within the household, in comparison with the man’s earlier children, was also observed by Edith Clarke ([1957] 1999) in her community studies.

In the same vein, the research conducted by Stycos and Back in 1953 with a sample of low-income Jamaican women who were currently in conjugal relationships established that fathers evidently felt a responsibility for their children by other women (Stycos and Back 1964). Based on their interviews, among those women with male partners who were older than forty, about a half of their partners were reported to help to support their outside children. The authors also reported that an informal system of adoption served to provide support and socialization for children born out of wedlock. They observed, "Unmarried mothers are more