The Slave Family and Household in the British West Indies, 1800-1834

Abstract

The Slave Family and Household in British West Indies, I800-1834 Those who see black family in Caribbean as disorganized and chaotic have frequently traced this situation to slavery and plantation system. Some sociologists, applying a historical interpretation, see link with slavery as a direct one. The functionalists, on other hand, see in modern economic and demographic conditions an adequate explanation of family system.I But latter agree that similar forces operated in period of slavery, so that there is a general consensus among sociologists regarding nature of slave family. Smith, for example, although critical of perception of chaos in modern family structure, holds that slavery involved fragmentation of elementary families and encouraged alternative forms of union which were neither obligatory nor stable. Greenfield, in his study of Barbados, concludes that the slaves mated, but plantation system denied them any family life. In general, view of slave family which emerges is one of residential units dominated by mothers and grandmothers, in which father or husband's place was always insecure.2 This view of slave family developed by sociologists, if somewhat hypothetical, has been upheld by most historians of British West Indian slavery. Thus, Patterson argues that in Jamaica the family was unthinkable to vast majority of population and that the nuclear family could hardly exist within context of slavery.3 Similarly, Goveia concludes that in Leeward Islands,