Assimilating Childrearing: Parenting Re-Socialization of Immigrant Mexican Families in the Bay Area

• In Event: 242 - Section on International Migration Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 16. Assimilation and US Immigration 2

Abstract

A very limited discursive analysis of childrearing strategies employed by the Mexican immigrant populations exists. Currently, heated policy debates surrounding legal and illegal immigration in general, and assimilation of immigrants in particular, merit further study. Accordingly, this study analyzes and delineates the underlying childrearing messages that are presented by immigrant Mexican families to their bicultural children at home, public settings, religious institutions, and in support or dismissal of various formative media outlets. Ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of 42 participants within six different and socio-economically diverse Mexican immigrant families in Oakland and Richmond, CA are presented. These observations and interviews are supplemented with an established set of revisionist empirical data. The theoretical analysis is largely informed by the established analytical focus in the existing early development and broad socialization literature, and thus central attention is given to parental logic, agency, and to the overall messages designed to encourage or prevent a Euro-American influenced transformation in the immigrants’ childrearing. Hence, the overall delineation of this parental socialization focused on the Mexican immigrant families’ suggested childrearing behaviors as they directly related to a desired and/or sanctioned household structure, gender personality, and group identity. The practical pedagogical concept of “showing and shaping” and the particular eco-cultural parental compromises in low- and high-SES Mexican immigrant families are introduced as adequate delineations of the overall Chicana/o family childrearing strategy and outcome. Study size limitations and implications for other collectivist immigrant family groups are also discussed.

Author

• José G. Soto-Márquez, New York University