ABSTRACT

Gutman has drawn from sources whose richness and variety can only excite the jealousy of colleagues working on slavery or family history outside the United States. Census returns suggest that, despite such disruptive forces, the black family preserved its traditional cohesion. The presence of single-parent households over the entire family cycle on the Stirling plantation is so atypical as to deserve more than an explanation based on speculation rather than fact. The picture which emerges of the slave family in Latin America and the Caribbean is more depressing than that drawn by Gutman for English America. Members of an immediate slave family may have pooled their resources to buy the freedom of a father, mother, or sibling. Slaves in Spanish and Portuguese America sought to decrease the disruptive impact of slavery on the family by a process of socialization.