POSITIVE Parenting

Is the family, as we knew it, in Jamaica dead? "... As we knew it ..." is the phrase that prompts me to write on this issue.

"... As we knew it ...?" My heart burns as I write these words because from my earliest recollections 'the family' (the nuclear one) as I knew it, never existed from my observations from primary school times to now - we are speaking of a span of 40 years.

What I have observed is that our family structure is one that I came to acknowledge as being what it is, when I studied at the undergrad level that we are a matrifocal society, where there are more female-headed households than male.

Support

Our culture is sadly, presently and historically, not 'family oriented', at least, not on a Eurocentric basis. Our men, at all levels of society, get away with 'murder' as they routinely do not care for the children they have sired. Our workplaces do not accommodate family nor family responsibilities - see how mothers and fathers are hard-pressed to get time off from work to watch their children compete or perform at some school-related activity - look at the issue of after-school care. At a debating competition some years ago I noticed that only parents of a certain hue, attended the event to support their children while a great majority of other children's parents (of a darker hue) were nowhere in sight.

Family life, a nuclear family structure, is not a mandate of any government or corporate entity - except for advertisements. Marriage is greatly discouraged among young adults in Jamaica (listen to our songs and even some of our pastors) whereas in a first-world country this is the opposite, never mind their increasing divorce rates. I was alarmed, but not too surprised, to discover that Jamaica has the lowest rate of marriage in the Caribbean. What does that tell us?

Totlyn Oliver

tao4now2003@gmail.com