Abstract
This chapter explores the dissonant discursive construction of paternal care in Dominica. It examines how fathers’ care is spoken about and performed in varied and divergent ways; how concepts of care as both material provision and emotional labour are in everyday circulation on the island, though, verbalised or hushed context- and class-specific ways. The chapter demonstrates how paternal care is discursively formed through everyday speech, public statements, silences, and quotidian practices. I am interested here in how discourse affords recognition—whether/how fathers are said, and thus seen, to care for their children in Dominica and, by extension, the Caribbean. Grounded in 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Dominica, Eastern Caribbean, the study draws on a methodologically eclectic approach (including analyses of quotidian conversation, semi-structured interviews, observations, family planning materials, television, and social media) to argue that Dominican fathers are finding burgeoning descriptive voice for their care, and in the process demanding a broader imagining of Caribbean fatherhood.
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Notes
- 1.
With French and British colonial histories, the Dominican lingua franca is a mesolect of English vocabulary with a Francophone kweyol syntax and a sprinkling of kweyol vocabulary. (Dominican kweyol is akin to Haitian and French Antillean Kreyols.) Dominica has been described as having a “fragmented language situation” (Trouillot, 1988), with kweyol being a first language in many villages, whilst those from Roseau (the capital) may know little kweyol. Kweyol is recognised as the folk/working-class/peasant tongue of the island, whilst formal English is that of the elite/middle classes/governance/colonisation. Nonetheless, people of various backgrounds code-switch fluidly as they move through context and social geography. For a detailed contemporary study of Dominican kweyol, see Paugh (2013).
- 2.
- 3.
Or mothers are charged with finding an aunt, grandmother, nennen (godmother), foster mother, or father to do so if she is unable to fulfil this role. See Gordon (1987) for an overview of the “child-shifting” phenomenon.
- 4.
Evoking the striking title of Clarke’s classic ethnography, My Mother Who Fathered Me (1957).
- 5.
I problematise this term due to discomfort with reducing complex biographies and intimate practices into a narrow positivist idiom. I retain the term for the reader’s ease of reference.
- 6.
Writing on her husband’s theory of “muted groups”, Shirley Ardener notes, “Edwin always maintained that muted group theory was not only, or even primarily, about women – although women comprised a conspicuous case… he also drew on his personal experience as a sensitive (intellectual) boy among hearty (sportive) boys in an all-boys London secondary school” (2005, p. 51). Hence, counter-hegemonic masculine expression is also in some sense muted.
- 7.
His daughter, a neighbourhood acquaintance, had introduced us.
- 8.
Kalinago people (once termed Caribs) are the indigenous inhabitants of Dominica, of which there are approx. 2100 resident in Dominica. Furthermore, amongst the general Dominican population, most people claim some Kalinago ancestry.
- 9.
Eerola and Huttenen (2011) called it the “metanarrative of the new father”, reflecting Hawkins and Dollahite’s “generative father” (1997), Pruett’s “nurturing father” (1987), Doherty, Kouneski, and Erikson’s “responsible father” (1998) and Pleck’s “positively involved father” (1997). In short, an emotionally open and sympathetic, “hands-on” paternal ideal.
- 10.
Founded in 1976, DPPA is part of the Caribbean Family Planning Affiliation (CFPA) and International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
- 11.
This echoes Kan and Laurie’s finding that of all ethnicities in the UK, “black Caribbean men hav[e]… the highest housework share compared to other groups” (2016, p. 11).
- 12.
A Jamaican group that pioneered the promotion of “responsible fatherhood” (Brown, 1995).
- 13.
The Caribbean Male Action Network, a regional activist group supported by UN Women, that works for gender justice (e.g. ending “gender-based violence”). See, http://menengage.org/regions/caribbean/.
- 14.
A dish of fish/smoked meat with provisions (plantain, yam, dasheen, green banana), dombwé/ dumplings, and seasoning, cooked in a single bom (pot) over gas/coals. The ingredients of a one-pot vary according to availability.
- 15.
To “go by” someone is to visit them at their home.
- 16.
“Soft” is an insult men wield on the ballfield, street, or at work and is antithetical to the valorised toughness of a “big hard back man” who eats “hard food” (provisions) and can “play hard” at football.
- 17.
To describe a child as “good for their self”—bold, assertive, and resilient (Paugh, 2013, p. 115)—is a compliment. Though mothers scold and beat children, fathers are seen and expected to be firmer with children.
- 18.
- 19.
Many residents register on both main mobile/cell operators to access promotions and ensure cheap calls to members of their social network on either provider. Hence, more than one SIM card is registered per person on the island.
- 20.
Retrieved November 10, 2015, from a public profile: https://www.facebook.com/1526251450984199/videos/1534461360163208/.
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Philogene Heron, A. (2019). Being Said/Seen to Care: Masculine Silences and Emerging Visibilities of Intimate Fatherhood in Dominica, Lesser Antilles. In: Esposito, E., Pérez-Arredondo, C., Ferreiro, J. (eds) Discourses from Latin America and the Caribbean. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93623-9_9
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