Summary
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Concern and debate over changes to family life have increased in the last decade, as a result of evolving employment patterns, shifting gender relations and more openness about sexual orientation. Most politicians and researchers have viewed these changes as harmful, suggesting that the family as an institution should not alter. The ‘New’ Family? challenges these dominant views. Leading academics in the field consider current diverse practices in families, and reveal the lack of balance between policies based on how families should be and how they actually are, illustrating the need for a broader definition of family.
Brothers and Sisters, Uncles and Aunts: A Lateral Perspective on Caribbean Families
Brothers and Sisters, Uncles and Aunts: A Lateral Perspective on Caribbean Families
The dysfunctionality of the West Indian family has been a consistent theme in the scholarly and popular literature on the Caribbean family, resurfacing again in 1991 after the United Kingdom census revealed a higher proportion of single-mother-headed households among the African-Caribbean community in Britain (Phoenix, 1996b). This, it has been argued, correlates with the apparently high levels of ‘welfare dependency’ and social deviance within this community (see, for instance, Dench 1996).
This interpretation is neither new nor original. By the mid-nineteenth century the concept of family in Britain was perceived as nuclear, patriarchal and hierarchical, and members of the family were defined by ...
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