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5 Brown J. World Aff. 203 (1998)
Female-Headed Households in the Caribbean: Sign of Pathology or Alternative Form of Family Organization

handle is hein.journals/brownjwa5 and id is 579 raw text is: Female-Headed Households in the Caribbean: Sign of Pathology or Alternative Form of Family Organization? HELEN I. SAFA Professor Emerita of Anthropology and Latin American Studies, University of Florida The rapid increase in female heads of household worldwide has led to wide- spread concern among policymakers as well as scholars regarding the rea- sons behind this phenomenon.1 This concern is particularly intense in advanced industrial countries such as the U.S., where female-headed households are attacked as the primary symbol of the welfare state and a key factor in the formation of a permanent underclass.2 Female-headed households, and particu- larly single mothers, are seen as examples of family disorganization and a break- down of family values, and are held responsible for rising rates of divorce, juvenile delinquency and crime. While attacks on female-headed households are not as strong in Latin America or the Caribbean, policymakers there are also alarmed at their increase and see them as a deviant form of family organization.3 But are female-headed households pathological, or can they be seen as an alternative form of family organization? This essay will address this question, draw- ing on my own research in the Caribbean and comparing this with other research on female-headed households. The negative view of female-headed households is in part our Eurocentric emphasis on the nuclear family as the norm and the embodiment of modernity and progress that lead us to view female-headed house- holds as pathological, primarily because of the rupture of the conjugal bond. The assumption is that the family is centered on marriage or the conjugal bond, while I argue that in many urban low-income households, particularly in the Carib- bean, conjugal bonds are weak and unstable in comparison to consanguineal rela- Summer/Fall 1998 - Volume V, Issue 2

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