Home Work: An Examination of the Sexual Division of Labor in the Urban Households of the East Indian and African Guyanese
Author(s)
Nettles, Kimberly D.
Abstract
Studies of kinship African peoples in the Americas have focused on examining the “problem” of so-called disorganized family life amongst the lower classes. Essentially, the debate has evolved around questions of culture versus structure. In other words, is the lack of an identifiably nuclear family structure (husband, wife, children) the result of a retention of traditional African cultural patterns or of the harshness of the slave system? In either scenario, matrifocality or mother-centeredness is viewed as a negative manifestation. In economic terms, women as single mothers are unable to provide adequately for their children and become part of an unending spiral of poverty. In moral terms, the prevalence of out-of-wedlock births reflects the lack of strong cultural values, the unnatural dominance of the women, and the seemingly shift-less quality of the men. In many ways, class status and debased morality are inextricably linked in the dominant ideology.
