Family and Gender Relations: Mexicans
Mexican family and gender relations are shaped by a number of factors. The relationship between fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, and sons and daughters all have characteristics that are unique to them. Mexican religion, traditions, economy, and geography are a few factors that shape those relationships. However, once in America, these relationships alter significantly.
| Husbands | |
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Mexican husbands are expected to be the primary breadwinners and maintain a role as head of the household. A man should display machismo, a sort of exaggerated male bravado, which is upheld culturally by both men and women in Mexico. Though some men use machismo as an excuse to be abusive to or controlling of their wives, most see it simply as an expectation for them to maintain the primary responsibility for the well-being of their family. Still, machismo does not allow men to do housework or care for children, as this would be seen as exceedingly effeminate. |
| Wives |
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Mexican wives are expected to remain in the household and take care of children, though in lower classes some women have to find jobs to help support their families. Generally though, the home is a woman's place and she is to be subordinate to her husband. Additionally, under patrilocal tradition, women must move in with their husband's family after the wedding. After this has occured, the women is put under the care and responsibility of the moher-in-law, who is supposed to train her to be a good wife. Occasionally though, and especially when immigrating husbands leave wives behind, the mother-in-law may be dominant to the point of abuse. Mother-in-laws may sometimes take remittances or even talk badly about the new wife to an absent husband. Additionally, many wives left behind fear their husbands will abandon them for American women. When men return after several years, wives often have trouble maintaining a marriage with a man they barely know. |
| Fathers | |
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Mexican fathers are responsible for dividing up their land (if they had) to their children. This ensures the patriarchal family setup because the controls which children will receive land. However, in some cases, if they did not have land, they worked on fields as jornaleros. |
| Mothers | |
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Mexican mothers are expected to feed the family. The mother of the household would go out and buy all the necessary ingredients, sometimes traveling for hours. She would wake up earlier than the rest of the family to cook breakfast for her husband and children. If a mother’s son had went to work in America, she would be responsible for his wife. This custom was practiced differently. Some mothers were tyrants, keeping any money her son sent for herself and her family, while others would spin stories about their daughter-in-law's infidelity. |
| Children | |
Mexican children are expected to be obedient, respectful, and to work hard so they can excel over the previous generation. Almost from the moment they are born, children are treated as “little men” and “little women.” They are trained early on for their roles as breadwinners or homemakers later in life. They are even given toys that relate to their future lives; for boys, they might involve work while for girls they might involve cooking or cleaning. Children help out at home doing chores around the house suited to their gender, learning skills for the future. The children are expected to receive an education. Children in Mexico are required to go to primary school after kindergarten. Although many children never finish primary school, some go on to attend secondary school and even go to university. For poor families, higher education is seen as the road to social and economic success, but not everyone can afford to let their children pursue their studies. Boys tend to drop out of school to do menial labor, providing needed financial support to their families. Girls tend to drop out due to early pregnancy, or to help their mothers take care of siblings or to do house work in the home of middle class families. |
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| Husbands | |
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In America, immigrant husbands are often forced to relinquish some of their traditional male roles. Because most immigration by men is without their wives, they will take on many household chores they never would have done in Mexico. In The World of Mexican Migrants, a woman recounts "how amazed she was to find that, living without women, these men had divided among themselves all the household tasks.” Still, in order to combat prejudice and their lower status in America, machismo is carefully guarded as a sort of defense mechanism for Mexican men. |
| Wives | |
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Mexican women who immigrate to America must work in order to help support their families. Being able to work outside of the home is often a "blessing and a burden" for these women. While contributing to the family often increases their status within the home, they are still expected to maintain their traditional roles. So, while they work, they must also cook, clean, and care for their children. |
| Fathers | |
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While the father of a household is here earning money to send back, most of his contact with his family is through weekly telephone calls. His role as father is to discipline his children if necessary, seeing as their mother is raising them alone. His children receive money from him, although they have sometimes only met him a few times. While a father is in America, his son may grow up to become a father, and his daughter to be married to her novio. |
| Mothers | |
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Mexican mothers usually come to America after their husbands have established some kind of work pattern. They leave her children to be raised by their grandparents for some time. In some rarer circumstances, a mother will come to America with her children. This does not occur often, because crossing the border with children is dangerous and very expensive. Depending on location, a mother who has children too young to go to school may not know English as well as a mother who has enough freedom to work for wages. |
| Children | |
"Either you have to leave your children behind in the village to be brought up by their grandparents […] Or you take your children with you— but that means you have to cross the border with a coyote, which means coming up with at least $7000 dollars for the wife plus the children because coyotes charge more for the kids, and anyway, do you really want to take there risks with your children?"
The previous passage from The World of Mexican Migrants (pg. 53) by Judith Adler Hellman illustrates the problem faced by families looking to immigrate to America. It is very dangerous and expensive to try and bring children to America and because of this, in many cases, families choose to leave their children in Mexico with other family members when they immigrate. In recent years, however, Mexican children have begun trying to cross the border on their own. Studies suggest that about 8,000 Mexican minors are currently trying to cross the United States-Mexico border each year on their own.
Immigrant parents, whether they are legal or not, almost always send their children to public school to take advantage of the opportunity to receive an education. However, they sometimes take them out of school at an early age so that they can work and help support the family. As a result, many immigrant Mexican children do not finish high school or go to college.
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Clips from the movie Real Women Have Curves, distributed by HBO.
