Family in the Caribbean
This is a comprehensive review of the literature on family, household and conjugal unions in the Caribbean. Theoretical trends and interpretations from the perspectives of colonial social welfare, adaptive responses to poverty, culture and ideology are critically assessed, and such concepts as matrifocality, male marginality, kinship networks and female-headed households are examined. The aim is to provide a clearer understanding, in order to pave the way for future investigations and to bury the ethnocentric images of Caribbean family patterns as pathological or deviant.