The theoretical issues raised by this study are not new, but their implications for the analysis of Caribbean kinship have not been explored except in a few brief publications (Alexander 1976, 1977; Drummond 1980; Fischer 1974; R.T. Smith 1973, 1978a, 1978b, 1982a, 1984c, 1984d). This short chapter provides interested readers with a fuller, but not exhaustive, explanation of the concepts and theoretical principles only touched upon in the first chapter. There we established the following: (1) the study of kinship has been profoundly influenced by assumptions about the empirical, or necessary, universality of the nuclear family; (2) the perception of lower-class social life in the Caribbean has been conditioned by the ideological structure of colonial society; (3) the quantitative analysis of ‘family structure’ raises serious problems of definition which are often resolved to the detriment of understanding. These issues come to a focus in the meaning of ‘normal’ (see R.T. Smith 1973).