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- Title
Legitimacy and illegitimacy: misplaced polarities in Caribbean family studies.
- Authors
Manyoni, Joseph R.
- Abstract
The article focuses on analytical dichotomy drawn between legitimacy and illegitimacy, sex relations and marital patterns in the Caribbean societies. In studies of the Caribbean family structure, the prevalence of customary law unions, concubinage, and illegitimate parenthood has traditionally been explained in terms of African customs, slavery conditions, and socioeconomic status research on Caribbean mating patterns has tended to view illegitimacy only from the point of view of the mother to the exclusion of the genitor. Data from recent research suggest that for a sociologically adequate understanding of Caribbean family structure, extramarital sexuality and premarital parenthood, both maternity and paternity, as well as attitudes to these behaviors, need to be taken into consideration to account for the continuation of these phenomena among contemporary Caribbean societies. Evidence is adduced to show that the prevailing forms of sexual behavior are implicitly sanctioned, not only among the social stratum in which they are predominant, but at the societal level. Hence the attribution of the concepts legitimacy and illegitimacy to societies in which extramarital relations and parenthood have always exceeded their counterparts is analytically inappropriate. Theories relating to the peculiar features of West Indian family structure and marital patterns are well documented in the literature on these former plantation slave societies. These theories have sought for explanations of Caribbean family forms from diverse factors such as African origins; slavery conditions; color attitudes demography and emigration.
- Subjects
WEST Indies; ETHNOLOGY; LEGITIMATION of children; FAMILIES; SOCIAL status; SOCIAL norms; SOCIOLOGICAL jurisprudence
- Publication
Canadian Review of Sociology & Anthropology, 1977, Vol 14, Issue 4, p417
- ISSN
0008-4948
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1755-618x.1977.tb00366.x