Early childhood in the Caribbean - Bernard van Leer Foundation

Copyright © 2008 by the Bernard van Leer Foundation, The Netherlands. The Bernard van Leer Foundation encourages
the fair use of this material. Proper citation is requested. This publication may not be resold for profit.
The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Bernard van Leer
Foundation.
About the author
Christine Barrow is a social anthropologist and presently Professor of Social Development at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute
of Social and Economic Research (SALISES), University of the West Indies (UWI) in Barbados. She was previously based at
the Faculty of Social Sciences on the same campus where she was Head of the Department of Government, Sociology and
Social Work. She also served as Deputy Principal at the Barbados Campus of UWI from 2002 to 2005. Her research interests
and publications (books, articles and reports) are on Caribbean social development with special emphasis on family
systems, child rights and development, gender ideologies and realities, and adolescent sexuality, reproductive health and
HIV/AIDS.
Citation
Barrow, C. 2008. Early childhood in the Caribbean. Working Paper 47. The Hague, The Netherlands: Bernard van Leer
Foundation
This paper is a summary of a much fuller document by the author, Childhoods and family culture: Growing up outside,
shifted or left behind?, to be published by Ian Randle Publishers, Jamaica, in 2008. The longer report contains the full
scholarly apparatus including a wealth of references and more material locating this work in the context of social science
research as a whole. Most importantly, it contains many direct quotes from the people of the four communities described
in this paper, and others interviewed in the course of the work. This summary was written by Martin Ince, a freelance
journalist based in London on behalf of Green Ink Publishing Services, UK.
ISSN 1383-7907
ISBN 978-90-6195-102-5