ABSTRACT
The legacy of historical and cultural heterogeneity in the Caribbean has resulted in a variety of family forms, not only between and within social groups, but also between and within families. This chapter introduces three case studies of African-Caribbean families, to illustrate the variety of types possible within one family and the fluidity of roles and relationships within the family. It explores some of the constituent elements in family formation and describes the everyday, interior experience and affective world of the family. For many women in the Caribbean income-generating activity was confined to the informal economy, which satisfied the material needs of family support, paid lip service to the rhetoric of a "modern" division of labor, and rendered their contribution invisible to the state. The generation of separate and independent economic risk structures within a single family may be considered characteristically West African and African-Caribbean, as opposed to European or North American.
