Illegitimacy in the Caribbean Social Structure: A Reconsideration

There is theoretical and empirical controversy in the literature on the Caribbean family regarding whether members of the lower strata consider non-legal marital unions and the resulting illegitimate children to be normative or deviant. Data on 176 respondents from Trinidad indicate that members of the lower strata their values so that both marriage and the non-legal marital union are part of their normative system. Four hypotheses are tested and validated: (1) Social class status is inversely related to the normative acceptance of nonlegal marital unions; (2) Social class status is inversely related to the value stretch; (3) Lowerclass men show more normative acceptance of non-legal marital unions than lower-class women; (4) Lower-class men stretch their values more than lower-class women. Vulnerability to environmental circumstances is a factor which may underlie the demonstrated relationships. M UCH theoretical and empirical controversy has centered upon the family in the Caribbean area. One controtroversial question concerns the values of members of the lower classes in Caribbean