Abstract
One of the social features of Jamaica most associated with its history and economic structure is the loose or informal family structure. It has had a close bearing on the pattern of labour force participation, being associated with low levels of labour force commitment among men and a desperate need for employment among women.
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Notes
W.G. Bowen and T.A. Finegan: The Economics of Labour Force Participation (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1969).
For studies of family formation, see inter alia, E. Clarke: My Mother Who Fathered Me (London, Allen and Unwin, 1975);
M.G. Smith: West Indian Family Structure (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1962).
Department of Statistics: Demographic Statistics, 1976 (Kingston, Department of Statistics, 1977), Table 9, p. 11. With its pejorative connotations, use of the term “illegitimacy” should be avoided in that context.
R. Landes: “Negro slavery and female status”, in Les Afro-Américans (Dakar, Institut Francais d’Afrique Noire, 1952), pp. 256–66. For an interesting study of household types, see
N.W. Higman: “Household structure and fertility on Jamaican slave plantations: A nineteenth century example”, Population Studies, Vol. 27, No.3, November 1973, pp. 527–50.
This proved a controversial issue among demographers. Some argued that increasing the formal marriage rate would increase fertility and thus population growth. This view stemmed from the observation that on average women in consensual unions had fewer children than legally married women. It could also be argued that women in consensual unions had a lower probability of conception because of the irregularity of living with a man. However, there was a wide range of methodological problems with the analysis of this issue. In particular it was often not possible to control for age, education, place of residence, or duration of union, nor to distinguish between children per union or type of union and children per woman on completing her child-bearing phase. Above all, there was a tendency for the data to reflect an ex post situation; it is possible that older women who had had a relatively large number of children had a relatively high probability of getting married. That would be consistent with the apparent tendency for young women to get pregnant with the hope of keeping a man. For representative studies, see J.M. Stycos and K.W. Back: The Control of Human Fertility in Jamaica (New York, Cornell University Press, 1964); G.W. Roberts: “Fertility differentials by type of union in the West Indies and some of their implications”, Latin American Regional Population Conference (Mexico, 1970).
K. Tekse: Population and Vital Statistics, Jamaica 1832–1964 (Kingston, Department of Statistics, 1974); Demographic Statistics, 1976, op. cit., Tables 35, 38.
Clarke, 1966, op. cit., p. 82. See also, G.E. Cumper: “The Jamaican family: Village and estate”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 7, No.1, March 1958, pp. 76–108.
G.W. Roberts: Fertility and Mating in Four West Indian Populations (Mona, ISER, 1975), p. 114.
For a similar Latin American view, see L.R. Peattie: The View from the Barrio (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1968), p. 47. See also
A. Marino: “Family, fertility and sex ratios in the British Caribbean”, Population Studies, Vol. 24, No.2, July 1970, pp. 171–72.
Ibid, pp. 325–26. See also Clarke, 1966, op. cit., p. 78; D. Ibberson: “Illegitimacy and the birth rate”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 5, No.1, March 1956, p. 99.
Central Bureau of Statistics: 1943 Population Census Report, Eighth Census of Jamaica and its Depen-dencies (Kingston, Government Printing Office, 1944), p. xivi.
T.S. Simey: Welfare and Planning in the West Indies (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 23.
J. Blake: Family Structure in Jamaica: The Social Context of Reproduction (New York, Free Press, 1961);
A.M. Greenfeld: “Socio-economic factors and family form”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 10, No.1, March 1961, pp. 72–85.
G.E. Cumper: “Lewis’s two-sector model of development and the theory of wages”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 12, No.l, March 1963, pp. 37–50. One study estimated that household size was a positive function of income, although unfortunately left it unclear whether this merely reflected the larger number of income earners.
R.R. Kerton: “An economic analysis of the extended family in the West Indies”, Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 7, No.4, July 1971, pp. 423–34.
Thus Kerr noted that mobility between socio-economic strata was very difficult “without extreme tension”. M. Kerr: Personality and Conflict in Jamaica (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1951), p. 194. Historically, there was racial stratification of occupations which was used by the plantocracy and the colonial authorities to maintain social control. But, because occupations were closely associated with race, mobility among the lower strata of the working class was severely restricted.
M. Mauss: The Gift (London, Cohen and West, 1954).
D. T. Edwards: Report on an Economic Study of Small Farming in Jamaica (Mona, ISER, University of the West Indies, 1961), p. 91. Though this was a study of rural behaviour, it is equally applicable among the working class in urban areas.
E. Brodber: “A study of yards in the city of Kingston”, Working Paper No, 9 (Mona, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 1975), p. 22.
D.L. Powell: “Female labour force participation and fertility: An exploratory study of Jamaican women”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 25, No.3, September 1976, p. 243.
Respectively, S.A. Sinclair: “ Fertility”, in G.W. Roberts (ed.): Recent Population Movements in Jamaica (Mona, CICRED, 1974), p. 162; Powell, 1976, op. cit., p. 253.
M. Kerr: Personality and Conflict in Jamaica (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1951), pp. 115–6.
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© 1981 International Labour Organisation
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Standing, G. (1981). Family Structure. In: Unemployment and Female Labour. ILO Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06148-8_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06148-8_4
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