Preamble
The roles of gender and family relations in Haiti have their roots in different cultural situations of the populace. Usually, the two main cultural influences are African and French. At one extreme is the African heritage. Among the Afro-Haitians who occupy the three lower classes of Haitian society, middle class, lower class urban and rural peasantry, the African cultural heritage remains strong. This is particularly evident in the areas of marital relations, defined roles of each gender before and after marriage, joint types and the extended family system. At the other extreme you have the Franco-Haitian or mulattoes, who have embraced the wholesale French heritage, and they occupy the upper class elite of Haitian society.
Rural Haiti
Rural Haiti is where the vast majority of Haitians and people are mostly Afro-Haitians. In these parts of Haiti, the twin influences of their African heritage and experience? s people from slavery have combined to define their family and marital relationships and the roles of both genders (male and female) in these relationships. The main economic activities of rural Haiti focus on agriculture. People, male and female, is essentially farmers.
For couples who are married or have a marital settlement, its important economic and financial activities, which will center around food crop farming, is a cooperative effort between a man and his wife. Economic contribution of culture in Haiti by rural women of the securities to the farm that any income generated from agricultural production belongs to the husband and wife. It manages the farm work in such a way that the activities complement the wife of her husband. While the man does all the hard work in preparing land for cultivation, decryption, plowing and hoeing, the wife is doing complementary work of weeding, pruning and harvesting.
As a follow up to the harvest, the wife processed product for sale on the market.
Crops such as cassava tubers are processed into cassava flour and cassava starch, by women, before taking the market for sale. She is solely responsible for their harvest to the farm. Revenues from sales are used to taking care of the needs of the entire family. For couples who have a marital arrangement of? or concubinage of the plasaj?, measures of economic security for women are taken. The husband, apart from providing a home for women, it is likely to be a second wife, is also required to cultivate a plot of land for? s from the wife to own the farm.
Rural women, who are full time traders in the market, often achieved economic independence. Tradition does not require these women share their income with their husbands. However, some help to increase family income by making voluntary contributions from their income from trade and other farm activities. Among farmers in rural Haiti, there are several types of marital arrangements between men and women. You have a monogamous union between a man and a woman. The union could hire under the traditional system. In this arrangement, the man pays a bride price to the woman's family.
Polygamy is still practiced in rural Haiti. The first wife is the only generally recognized by the government as the legitimate wife, while looking for other wives? of the plasaj? as concubines? s the man. Due to the great love for children of Haitian parents, accept children, whether born in or out of wedlock. The? of lakou or system? extended family remains very much alive and well in rural Haiti. Members of a job? of lakou of? cooperatively on one of the farms? s, and they provide financial assistance in times of need. It is worthy to note that most of the traditional practices of rural Haiti are a faithful transfer of the original traditions of their African ancestors. Some of these traditional practices like polygamous unions, cooperative farm work and couples living in extended family compounds are still much in existence today in rural African societies.
Urban Haiti
The Afro-Haitian migration from rural communities to urban centers has resulted in the modification of some of their traditional practices and refrains from outright elimination of others. Among the communities of the urban lower class in Haiti today, the most common marital arrangement is still on? of the plasaj? or concubinage. Due to the high cost of formal marriage ceremonies, the couple as man and wife coexist until they can financially justify their marriages in a Christian religious ceremony or in a court of competent jurisdiction. Husbands and wives in families of the urban lower class share the cost of maintaining the household. The husbands work in paid employment while their wives continue to trade or small operation of small restaurants and beer halls. The husbands of the urban lower class also help with heavy household tasks such as collecting firewood for cooking fuel, while the wives do real cooking, along with another house that holds his duties and childcare.
Among the middle-class Haitians living mainly in urban areas, formal monogamous marital relationships are the norm. The joints of the middle class usually take the form of wedding ceremonies of the church or the legal exchange of vows in a court of competent jurisdiction. Husbands usually help their wives with childcare and other household tasks, particularly when employing the husband and wife paid employment. Since his arrival in Haiti for the rear half of the twentieth century, Protestant churches have encouraged legal unions between couples in urban lower class and middle class, providing affordable church wedding for members of these churches.
The upper class elite that Haitians, who are mostly Cubans, have for hundreds of years mimicking the French ways of doing things. They live like the French, they speak the French language in the home and workplace, and of course, have adopted the customs and marital practices in France. The civil and religious marriages were the norm, and "best" families could be traced to ancestors legally married to the nineteenth century and beyond. Courting among the eligible bachelors and spinsters were arranged by the best families? of??. Therefore, it was not uncommon that families mulatto elite are correlated, with cousins marrying. The husband used to go to work in paid employment or run the family business, leaving the wife to take care of the home front, surrounded by servants. With immigration from Europe, and the changing economic situation of Haiti, things are also changing in the upper class elite. It is now quite common for wives of the elite gain paid employment, while part of husbands in household management.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
