Masculinity and Fathering in Jamaica, by Patricia Anderson

A mythos of Caribbean fatherhood that recurs from plantation to present imagines men as either absent fathers, indifferent to the lives of their children, as "marginal" appendages to "matrifocal" families, or, when at home, as domineering authoritarians.Patricia Anderson's quantitative compendium of Jamaican fathering and masculinities destabilizes this simplistic vision, offering instead a rigorous enquiry grounded by a rich breadth of male perspectives.For an ethnographer the idea of measuring the complex emotional terrain of parenthood might seem an unrewarding task, characterized by cold abstraction.Numbers often leave so much unsaid.Masculinity and Fathering in Jamaica offers another kind of quantitative analysis, one concerned with everyday familial meanings.Anderson, an applied sociologist from Jamaica, is attentive to these realities, seeking empirical fidelity to the "social worlds" and "systems of meaning" of her interlocutors (p.xv).The book offers a thorough account of men's parenting attitudes in the Anglophone Caribbean's most populous country.The text is informed by surveys conducted across four communities, each reflecting a different Jamaican class fraction (from low-income urban "garrison," peri-urban farming/commuter, "blue collar" suburban and middle-income suburban communities).It grows from two projects: a 2005 study provides its data, and a now classic 1991 team study with Janet Brown and Barry Chavannes guides its thematic focus and analysis; Brown's 1990s fatherhood research is also scattered across the book in qualitative interludes, complementing the core text.The result of empirical engagements from 1991-2021, and surveys with more than 1,873 participants, the book is the most comprehensive quantitative analysis of Caribbean fatherhood to date.Chapters 1-4 form an extended literature review.It situates the book's intervention within core debates in classic and recent Anglophone Caribbean kinship/gender studies; examines international scholarly theorizations and ways of measuring masculinities and fathering; and offers a thorough review suggestion; of scholarship on male sociality, violence, reproduction, sexuality, and fathering in the Anglophone region.This last section could have been shorter, particularly as empirical chapters return to relevant scholarship (in "discussion" sections).Nonetheless, scholars/students of kinship and gender will be grateful for this extensive bibliographic groundwork.Chapter 5 focuses on methodology, elaborating two scales Anderson devises to measure men's identification with Jamaican fathering ideals (economic responsibility, sacrifice, nurturing, example setting), and the extent to which