Masculinity and Fatherhood Reexamined

Abstract

This article examines contradictory perspectives on fatherhood in an agricultural community in Jamaica. In recent years, scholars of the Caribbean family have focused on fatherhood as part of a general island-wide concern over the development of positive male images. To date, studies of rural Jamaica have focused on female-headed households, generating some fairly stereotypical profiles of Caribbean men as irresponsible fathers and unfaithful, abusive partners, on the margins of family life. The article revisits this image, reflecting on gender roles and relationships through an ethnographic case study of one particular father. Richard, a hatter with three children, lives in a common-law marriage. At the time of research, he was at the center of community controversy which challenged his responsibility as a father. A study of the controversy reveals that fatherhood is contested terrain where an emerging cultural disposition toward nurturing fathers competes with conventional notions of the aloof disciplinarian.