Kinship and Class in the West Indies: A Genealogical Study of Jamaica and Guyana [Paperback]

Smith defines three types of family structure in the West Indies (adapted from Elizabeth Bott, *Family and Social Network*): 1) joint conjugal role pattern, 2) segregated conjugal role pattern, and 3) disassociated conjugal role pattern (pgs. 141-148). The meaning of these terms is not immediately discernable, so I will explain them a little. The first one, "joint conjugal role pattern" is basically the "nuclear family": husband, wife and child(ren). The "joint" part of the term denotes that the duties of both husband and wife (child rearing, cooking, cleaning) are shared. This family structure is most common in the modern world, especially in the United States. Simple enough. The second type of family form, "segregated conjugal role pattern", is what many would consider the traditional roles of husband and wife, where "men should provide support and general protection while women engage in child rearing and domestic work" (146). That is also simple enough. The third pattern, "disassociated conjugal role pattern", is the key to understanding West Indian family structure, according to Smith. This type of family is most fully embodied in what is frequently called a "visiting union" - where the father lives in a different household than his children and their mother. He provides financial support to them and visits every once in a while. In American culture, such a father might be thought of as "not there", i.e. not providing for the emotional, moral and spiritual guidance of his children, even if he does provide for them financially. But to apply this set of standards to the West Indian situation, per Smith, is essentially ethnocentric. The premise of his book (from what I can understand) is to show that "visiting unions", which may appear to give rise to matrifocal and female-headed households, are in fact not so. Looking at the family in terms of household gives us this skewed perception of West Indian family structure, wherein a family does have to live in the same house, or even the same town. Family members can live in different households, and emotional attachments and beliefs about what is right and wrong are different than in the U.S. or elsewhere. Illegitimacy becomes a relative term, lacking much of the moral stigma associated with it in the U.S. As the title of his book suggests, Smith sees the historic relationship between the elite, slave-owning planter class and their lower-class slaves and free people of colour (particularly the phenomenon of a 'kep' miss' ['kept mistress', meaning a slave women kept as the mistress of a slave owner]) as the key to understanding modern Jamaican and Guyanese kinship patterns.

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