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What Does Wash Belly Mean In Jamaican Patois?

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grand_palladium_hotel_wellesley_omeil_and_childrenWhat Does Wash Belly Mean In Jamaican Patois?

by Sheree-Anita Shearer | Associate Writer

One of the highest honours in a Jamaican family is the position of the wash belly. It comes with many advantages and blatant bias that often infuriates other family members although they may have been a part of the problem in the first place.

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Who is this person and why does he/she wield so much power in the Jamaican family? If a Jamaican introduces you to another person as their wash belly, you are meeting their last-born child.

I know now that there is a collective sigh of understanding especially for older siblings (the category I fall into).

Not only is the wash belly the youngest, but he/she is also often considered the laziest and the most spoilt of all the children.

Last-born children in Jamaica all benefit from the same privileges. The most obvious one is that they are usually not disciplined nearly as harshly as their older siblings. And older siblings take serious issue with this.

Last-born children do not have the number of chores to do either, and for the few they have, someone is always ready and willing to help them finish them. Sometimes, even the parents who made and proclaimed the chores mandatory for every child will do it instead of insisting the wash belly do it.

Because everyone remembers the wash belly as the baby, we all subconsciously think they are incapable of handling even the slightest challenge alone. Most last-born children revel in it and I can’t say I blame them, who wouldn’t do anything to get out of laborious chores on a weekend? The youngest child is never the best cook, laundress or anything related to household chores.

Last-born children are hardly ever in trouble with their parents. No matter how heinous the charge (broken furniture or worse), the older sibling who was left in charge will bear the consequences. Older siblings watch in awe of just how far their younger siblings are willing to take arguments with their parents without fear.

You have an even more advanced level of wash-bellies, these are the ones who are significantly younger than their siblings. It is not uncommon for there to be decades of years between the first and last child.

Last-born children with adult siblings are exposed to even more coveted privileges. This is where the spoilt part comes in. Birthdays, Christmases or just a random weekday are the perfect days for a new toy, cash, or ice cream you name it. All the things older siblings had to wait for specific dates and times to get.

Older siblings often grew up with the understanding that for the benefit of the entire family some sacrifices had to be made. While these sacrifices affected the parents most of all, they would sometimes trickle down to the kids depending on how bad things were.

For this reason, most older siblings in an attempt to ensure that their younger siblings are not faced with the same problems they had had will grant every request no matter how ridiculous to the younger sibling.

In most cases, last-born siblings receive more outward demonstrations of love from their parents. Older children will all laugh at the fact that while their parents’ actions have proved their love many times over, it has only been said once or twice.

Younger siblings usually never have this problem and by the time they come around, “I love yous” and hugs are issued quite frequently.

While Jamaican parents hardly ever miss the opportunity to celebrate and support their children, last-borns get even more support. It is often the youngest sibling who gets to enter a creative or niche field with the full support of their families.

For older children it is expected that you will get a good job in a respected field to secure your future, last born children hardly ever have that pressure and they have more room to try something that may fail as they have an army of family members waiting to assist if they need to.

From this standpoint, it seems the wash belly has it all, doesn’t it? What issue could they possibly have? Surely, none. Right?

Well, I beg to differ. Although I am not a part of the club, I happen to have many younger siblings who are unafraid of voicing the plight of being the youngest.

To start, the life of a wash belly can be pretty lonely. Although you are not an only child, it is almost as though you are. You live a life surrounded by teenagers and adults who are always “in charge”. The closest you may get to have kids your age around are cousins or nieces and nephews.

While you do love your siblings, the reminiscent conversations of the fun they would have back then are lost on you because you never existed. This might include at times relatives who have passed away who everyone seems to remember but you.

Also, the youngest's voice is often ignored because there is always someone in charge. Because they (wash bellies) are young, what could they possibly know about anything? This often continues right into adulthood and most wash bellies simply give up on trying to have any major input in serious family discussions.

This one I think can be a blessing and a curse for wash bellies, since you are the youngest, you are the one who gets the most support and everyone's instinctive response is to protect you from everything.

This can lead to overprotective parents and siblings who you may feel are trying to control your every move simply because they feel they can. But, it really comes from a place of worrying about your well-being and thinking you are incapable of surviving on your own.

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References & Sources For What Does Wash Belly Mean In Jamaican Patois?

  1. chocs2000 (2020) Washbelly, Life amongst other things. Available at: https://lifeamongstotherthings.com/2020/03/04/washbelly/ (Accessed: October 30, 2022).
  2. Jamaican Patwah, I.W.D.T. (no date) Wash belly: Patois definition on Jamaican patwah, Jamaican Patwah. Available at: https://jamaicanpatwah.com/term/Wash-belly/1326#.Y11atXbMLrc (Accessed: October 30, 2022).

What Does Wash Belly Mean In Jamaican Patois | Written: October 30, 2022

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