The Complex Logics of Parenting in the United States: The Case of Mexican Immigrant Families

• In Event: Latino Immigrant Educational Experiences Across the Life Course: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Abstract

Objectives:

In this paper, we investigate factors that motivate and shape Mexican immigrant parenting practices in the United States. We situate this work within a cultural capital framework for examining social class effects on educational experiences.

Perspective and Frameworks:

Sociologists of education have long pointed to childrearing as a mechanism of social class inequality, arguing that social class standing drives childrearing attitudes and behaviors (parenting practices) and the underlying motivations behind those practices (childrearing logics) in ways that reproduce class-based advantage among children (Lareau 2002). Recent research finds that middle class parents more actively cultivate their children’s talents and sense of entitlement in organizations compared to working class and poor parents, and these practices confer educational benefits (Calarco 2011). However, the bulk of this research focuses on white and African American families with little attention to Latino and immigrant families. Mexican immigrants are a particularly interesting case as they tend to outperform their native-born peers on a variety of educational measures despite fewer socioeconomic resources on average—known as the Mexican immigrant paradox. Examining Mexican immigrant parenting practices can thus illuminate the salience of class for Latino immigrant childrearing and larger patterns of educational inequality.

Methods:

Data come from in-depth interviews with parents/guardians in under-resourced, predominantly Latino communities in San Antonio, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona. We focus on a sample of 17 Mexican-origin families, where at least one parent is a first or second generation immigrant from Mexico. We analyze transcripts from individual interviews with 31 parents from the 17 families in the sample.

Findings:

Preliminary findings suggest that Mexican immigrant parents employ a variety of parenting practices that are not unique to their social class standing or a single parenting logic. In some cases, parents seek to cultivate their children’s talents and introject Mexican cultural values of education and respect onto their children. In other cases, parents are deferential to school officials and are unfamiliar navigating the school system for necessary resources. Gender is also a salient parenting factor not only in how parents provide boys with more freedom compared to girls, but also in division of roles between mothers and fathers in their involvement in schooling. Immigrant fathers were often very involved with their children’s schooling, for example attending parent-teacher conferences or helping with homework. Father involvement tended to be requested by mothers because of fathers’ greater English proficiency from working outside the home and mothers overwhelming distrust of school provided translators. An unintended result of these gendered employment arrangements and language-skill development patterns was fathers who are very knowledgeable about their children’s schooling, a departure from earlier studies finding low involvement among fathers (Lareau 2000).

Significance:

Although families are united by their status as Mexican immigrants, there is great heterogeneity in their experiences, documented status, and own upbringings that influence their childrearing practices and logics. This heterogeneity confounds typical class-based understandings of parenting practices in the literature, and it may help explain the Mexican immigrant paradox in education.

Authors

• David Enrique Rangel, Brown University

• Megan Shoji, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc