The Role of the Male in the Middle-Class Jamaican Family: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Research into the Caribbean family has focussed on the marginality of men in the lower-class black family and has attempted to explain this 'deviation' from the norm. The research reported here demonstrates that in the middle- class, which presumably embodies the norm, the male is also perceived as marginal. The paper analyzes this puzzling fact by focussing on the relation between behavior and the perception of behavior and the relation between the public and domestic domains. Through a comparison with the white, urban middle and working classes in the United States the paper seeks to demonstrate that the Jamaican middle-class perception of the male in the family is in fact part of a middle-class ideology by which the middle class defines and makes real to itself its place in the stratification system.