Family and Kinship

Retention of the varied and complex Jamaican family structure and kinship ties is one of the strongest and most problematic areas of cultural continuity for Jamaican communities in Canada. Family organization is based on a three-tiered structure – legal marriage, common-law unions, and visiting (and casual) unions. Legal marriage, considered ideal from the point of view of Christian values, is the most common form across all classes but most typical among the Eurocentric upper and middle classes and increasingly so for the upper working class, or labour aristocracy. Common-law marriage constitutes the basis for family and kinship ties among the majority of the population of African descent. Incompatible with slavery, a European-style union of spouses historically could easily be destroyed by sale or removal of one of the partners. Children and kinship ties also issue from visiting unions, where a woman living on her own is visited by male friends, and from casual unions, where a female, although still living at home, becomes involved with casual male acquaintances.

Because of the predominance of children born out of legal wedlock, the government of Jamaica in 1976 and 1993 removed disabilities associated with the status of illegitimacy, particularly regarding inheritance. These family patterns have led to Jamaica’s being regarded as a matrifocal, even matriarchal society. In addition to bearing and nurturing children, women generally have been breadwinners as well. Women in Jamaica therefore have considerable economic power and independence and feel equal to men, but many are prepared to accept male leadership in certain areas. Moreover, they have been availing themselves of educational opportunities and now outnumber men in all the traditional disciplines at the University of the West Indies. Also, there have been women in the Jamaican legislature since 1944 and several have been ministers. In both public and private sectors, women now fill higher-echelon positions.

In Canada, educated immigrant women have made significant contributions to their communities and to Canadian society at large. In the public sector, they have been most present in general administration, health-care delivery, and education. In the private sector, they are represented in financial services and in insurance, high-status fields of employment in Jamaica. Jamaican-origin women have been as prominent as men in the struggles for equal rights and equality of treatment for all Canadians.

For less educated or skilled women who have entered Canada as part of family reunification, retention of traditional Jamaican, class-based forms of family organization and gender relations may be problematic. Caribbean-born and by extension Jamaican-born immigrants appear to have the highest incidence of female–single-parent families – 24.5 percent in 1986 as against 7.1 percent for other foreign-born and 12.7 percent for Canadian-born. The majority of these families are of working-class origin, which is not a barrier to socioeconomic mobility in Jamaica. In Canada, however, the majority of such families lack the support of the traditional extended family, especially a mother or grandmother to help with rearing children. They are thus more likely to suffer from cultural adjustment problems associated with, for instance, transfer of older schoolchildren from Jamaican to Canadian educational systems and loss of schooling and inability to work on the part of younger women who become single-parent heads of families.

Female–single-parent families of Jamaican/Caribbean origin earn far less than any other type of Canadian family ($17,604, as against $26,054 for other foreign born and $24,117 for Canadian-born in 1986) and are among the poorest in Canadian society. Relatedly, 22 percent of Jamaican/Caribbean–origin single-parent families own their residence, as against 75 percent for others and 66 percent for Canadian-born.

The persistence of the traditional Jamaican family structure in Canada raises the prospect of a permanent underclass, educationally and materially ill-equipped for the labour market, exposed to high rates of unemployment, and with alienated youths, reinforced by both the perception and the realities of systemic discrimination. Nevertheless, family and kinship ties continue to be a cohesive force among Jamaicans in Canada.