Other questions posed were, “Your grandparents, they married? How much children a piece they have? How much children your father have? How much children your mother have? ...Tell me which brother you were just talking about again? Is that the brother by your father or mother side? Oh okay. I get you… Which sister is that again and she is your sister how? Oh okay, I get you? … How many whole brothers and sisters do you have? How many half sisters and brothers do you have? The conversation continued, ‘Let me get that straight is that your aunty by your mother’s mother side or by your mother’s father side? Is that your uncle by your father’s father side or your father’s mother side…okay I got you there…it’s a little challenge but I trying to keep up.”
Over the past weeks I have overheard conversations, as well as been engaged in discussions, where the issue of the ‘Face of the West Indian Family’ manifested itself in so many different forms. This led me on an in-depth analysis of what is defined as the ‘typical’ West Indian Family or what we consider to be the accepted standards for the West Indian Family. You may ask what the norms or the accepted standards for the West Indian family are. I will give you a moment to think on it. How many of us have what we call a ‘whole brother or whole sister?’ This is just a question, if you do then ask yourself how prevalent this situation is, not only in our society but throughout the region. I know that in some households there are mothers who tell their children, that a ‘whole brother or whole sister’ is derived from the maternal or mother’s side because as I heard one mother tell her child, “how you know that that’s your sister, you sure that that is you father child, only your brother and sister on your mother side you sure about not them on you father side, cause he heself aint sure is his…so that’s why your mother children alone is your whole brother and whole sister.” I smile when I hear things like this because we always find ways in which to rationalize these things. However for the purpose of this article, I use this term ‘whole brother or whole sister’ in the context which means that you and one or more of your siblings share the same mother and father.
Many of us in our conversations have to be so specific upon the simple introduction of a sibling. ‘This is my brother John Doe. He is by my mother’s side.’ We may also say, ‘This is my sister Sue. You wouldn’t know her because she is by my father’s side.’ Some of these conversations even take different forms with countless explanations, ‘This is my brother Ken, but he aint raise with us because he father mother take him when he was small…This is my sister Carol but she lives with my mother, father, aunty in Stoney Ghaut.’ The explanations and the stories are countless. They may seem strange to the foreign ear but to the West Indian ear; it is simply a way of life. We just accept it.
I know that over the decades in trying to find answers as to why there is a breakdown in the family, why there are so many single female headed households and why fathers are absent, we have pondered upon several things, one pointed reason being that it is our heritage, that it is what we have inherited from our forefathers, so therefore it has become West Indian tradition. I ask however, don’t you think that the time has come to redefine the West Indian family? Don’t you think that we owe it to the future generations to provide them with a stable familial environment? Don’t we have the means by which to change? In one discussion, I was told that the way in which the West Indian family has been operating has worked for us throughout the years and that it is still working, I ask, is this really the case? Did it work? Is it working today? These are just mere questions that I am asking. I also question when we use the terminology that ‘it has worked for us’ in what ways have it worked for us? Have we ever really asked what impact our ‘typical’ or ‘accepted’ West Indian familial structure has had on society or better yet on us? Are we saying that this structure has worked because some of us know nothing different? Don’t you think that like so many archaic things that the structure, as it is can use a bit of tinkering because it is obsolete?
Do we ever truly listen to ourselves when we praise what some of us define as the ‘typical’ structure of the West Indian family? Try this one on for size. “They say that Jane is my sister, so they say, but my father aint take her,” or “they say that John is my brother but he mother take him back and give him to another man.” Other comments which have commonplace in our dear West Indian familial structure are, ‘Yes, that is my sister or my brother, yes is my father child, and yes I am older than her and yes my mother knows, and yes my parents were married, so do the Maths,’ or ‘that’s my father child, yes that’s the outside one.’ We also hear, ‘that is my father child but he or she aint lawful, he or she is the bastard, that’s why we last name different.” I have one friend whose brothers and sisters hate her and refuse to communicate with her even though they are grown adults because she is considered to be, what in our long list of West Indian terminology, we call the ‘outside child.’ In this conversation she said to me, “to this day this is something I do not get because I did nothing wrong, yet after all these years these people who are my flesh and blood wants nothing to do with me and sees me as a criminal when I myself am innocent in this entire thing.” Do we stop to even think how this affects the children who are born into these situations, how these things may shape their psyche and their interpretation of what the ‘proper’ familial structure should be and of course there are liberalists such as myself who may argue that there is no such thing as a ‘proper’ familial structure. This can be an ongoing debate.
I ask that you think, because we have situations which are commonplace where within our current West Indian family structure and this may seem like a trivial example, you may have a sibling who has more acceptable features, whose father does or does not support him or her, or whose paternal family is more/less stable, more/less affluent and this may result in jealousy, teasing from other siblings, the development of an inferiority complex or in some cases because this does happen, the showering of affection and attention by mothers, because one child’s father provides more financial support than the other.
I can recall a friend of mine from Grenada joking and saying, “What is the one question you should never ask a West Indian child?” Puzzled we all tossed our hats in the ring and tried to guess. We all came up with the wrong answers. The answer given was, ‘Who or Where Is Your Father?’ We all laughed because to a large extent this is true. I am by no means ‘thumbing my nose at’ or ‘knocking’ what we may consider the ‘typical’ West Indian family. I myself I am the product of the ‘typical’ West Indian family. I have no whole brothers or sisters. I know that things happen, as we like to say and children ‘come about’ as an old lady friend of mine says. I am just asking the question as whether the time has come for us to give serious consideration to the restructuring or creation of a new face for what some of us consider the ‘typical’ West Indian family. Men not because your father had forty-three children means that you absolutely must do the same and women there comes a time when we have say that the path that my forbearers walked doesn’t necessarily have to be the same path that I tread. We sit down and make so many goals for ourselves. We work towards accomplishing our dreams. Have we really sat down and said that my dream is to do my part in recreating or giving a new meaning to what is called the West Indian family?
