Latino Families

In the absence of clear pathways to citizenship, undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants who came to the United States as children, commonly known as “Dreamers,” tend to live in more complex and less stable households than their documented or native-born counterparts, according to a new study.

Prior research has shown the widespread impact that lack of legal status has on immigrants’ economic and social well-being, including reduced likelihood of finishing high school, concentration in dangerous jobs, and lower pay for their labor. Combined with the constant threat of deportation, these vulnerabilities undercut the health and well-being of undocumented Latinos. In “Living Arrangements and Household Complexity among Undocumented Latino Immigrants,” Matthew Hall, Kelly Musick, and I provide the first national estimates of the living arrangements of this group and compare their experiences to those of other racial, ethnic, and immigrant groups.

Our study compared the composition, size, and stability of the households of unauthorized immigrants, documented immigrants, and U.S.-born groups, and examined the extent of these groups’ shared family and residential ties. It used nationally representative data from the 1996, 2001, 2004 and 2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which include sufficiently large samples of Latino immigrants, information about legal status, and measures of all relationships among household members. It

Results show that undocumented migrants are less likely than other groups at similar life stages to live in simple arrangements, exclusively with partners and/or children, and much more likely to co-reside with extended family and non-family members. Their households are also characterized by higher levels of instability, as they change membership, size, and form more frequently than other Latino families.

Undocumented Latinos who were living in the U.S. before age 15 are significantly less likely than documented Latinos and U.S.-born Latinos to be living with just a partner or a partner and children, at 47 percent compared with 55 and 52 percent, respectively.
They are also twice as likely to live with nonrelatives as other groups (including documented Latinos), at 14 percent compared to about 7 percent.
Undocumented migrants are less likely to live with immediate family members, and highly likely to live with extended family members. As many as one-quarter share a household with aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and more distant extended kin, compared with just 12 percent of documented Latinos.
The average undocumented Latino lives in households with more people, on average 3.1 adults and 2 children, compared with 2.7 adults for similarly-aged documented Latinos.
Undocumented migrants’ household size and composition, along with counts of adults, children, and families, exhibit substantially (and significantly) higher rates of change across waves than all other legal/racial groups, including documented Latinos.

Other research finds that undocumented immigrants are more likely to live in overcrowded housing, less likely to be homeowners (Hall and Greenman 2014), and more likely to be making residential decisions within contexts of significant economic and social constraint (Asad and Rosen 2018). Taken together, these findings illustrate the volatility that distinguishes the daily lives of those who lack authorization status in the U.S. The uncertainty associated with the absence of legal authorization destabilizes the family life of undocumented immigrants and others – including U.S.-born citizen children who may be living in their households. This could drive undocumented immigrants to look for a way to become legal within the country, seeking assistance from immigration lawyers and other legal aids. If you are in a similar situation and if you have an immigration case it might be worth getting in touch with an immigration lawyer who may be able to help you, giving you the stability you need. As you can see from our study, it might be a good step to take.

Our study, as well as the other work cited here, sheds much-needed light on some aspects of the lives of those affected by their documentation disadvantage. However, it is critical to note that our analysis cannot speak to the heightened precariousness of Dreamers’ lives due to uncertainty about the future of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Our analyses are also unable to reflect the experiences of the thousands of people who are not included in household data because they are being detained and placed in foster arrangements as part of U.S. family separation and immigrant detention policies. Other research indicates that the looming threat of deportation and detention has consequences for the living arrangements of even U.S.-born citizen children living in households, so there is reason to believe that the current social and political climate may already be compounding the household and family instability and complexity of those who are undocumented (Amuedo-Dorantes and Arenas-Arroyo 2018).

Providing Dreamers with pathways toward permanent residence and the cessation of family separation and institutionalization policies could stabilize and strengthen family life and promote the wellbeing of future generations of immigrant families.

Contact:

Youngmin Yi, yy567@cornell.edu

February 5, 2014

CCF Civil Rights Symposium: Racial-Ethnic Realities since the Civil Rights Act

Overview: Changing Racial-Ethnic Realities since the Civil Rights Act

Remarks by: Stephanie Coontz

Today the Council on Contemporary Families releases the second set of papers in a three part symposium marking the 50^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. Yesterday researchers described the rearrangement of America’s religious landscape over the past half century. Today’s four papers discuss the changes in racial-ethnic relations, including the emergence of Latinos as the largest “minority” in the United States, the approaching eclipse of the white majority, the increase in interracial marriage and multiracial families, and the progress that has and has not been made in lessening the inequities historically associated with non-white status.

New Demographic Realities

In 1964, race relations, like television shows, were still largely viewed in black and white. As author Raha Forooz Sabet notes in “Changes in America’s Racial and Ethnic Composition Since 1964,” at that time, 85 percent of the population was white and 11 percent black. Latinos were less than four percent of the population, and fewer than six percent of U.S. residents were foreign-born.

Today half of all children under the age of one are ethnic and racial “minorities,” and within 40 years, non-Hispanic whites will account for just 47 percent of the population. There are now as many foreign-born as black Americans.

By 2060, according to University of Texas-San Antonio researcher Rogelio Sáenz, the single largest component of the child population of the U.S. will be Latino. In his paper, “The State of Latino Children,” Sáenz discusses the characteristics of these Americans, who will soon become the most numerous single group of students, voters, workers, and consumers. Latinos overall have below-average levels of educational attainment, in part because of low levels of preschool enrollment. However, it is a myth that Latino youth are not learning English. Three-fifths of Latinos aged three to 17 are bilingual, speaking Spanish at home but also fluent in English. Only four percent of all Latino children and less than 12 percent of those who are foreign-born are unable to carry on a conversation in English.

More than one-third of Latino children live in poverty. Having two married parents is less protective for Latino children, in terms of income, than it is for white and black families. Nearly one-quarter of children in Latino married-couple families are poor.

But Sáenz highlights an “epidemiological paradox” in the Latino community. Despite higher than average poverty rates, Latino children are healthier than average and have a longer life expectancy at birth than either white or black babies. Sáenz argues that determining the source of this cultural advantage is as important as finding ways to help Latino children overcome their educational and income disadvantages.

The Good News: Old Prejudices are Lessening and Many Old Boundaries Have Been Broken Down

Discussing the changing prospects of African Americans (“Are African Americans Living the Dream 50 Years after Passage of the Civil Rights Act?”), Velma McBride Murry and Na Liu of Vanderbilt University note real breakthroughs for a significant portion of that population. The number of elected black officials in the country has skyrocketed, from about 100 in 1964 to 10,000 in 1990, and today we have an African-American president in his second term. There is now a substantial African-American middle class. Indeed, one in ten black households earns $100,000 or more a year.

One dramatic change, Kimberlyn Fong points out in “Changes in Interracial Marriage,” is the revolution in attitudes toward interracial marriage. When the Civil Rights Act was enacted, less than five percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. Today 77 percent approve of such marriages, an all-time high. Since the early 1960s the number of new marriages contracted each year between spouses of a different race or ethnicity has increased sixfold.

Fong documents interesting differences among racial-ethnic groups in the extent of interracial marriage and in its gender makeup. Among recent marriages, the most common interracial matches are white/ Hispanic couples. The second most common is between whites and Asians. However, Asian women are more than twice as likely as Asian men to marry outside their race.

The sex ratio skews in the opposite direction in marriages between blacks and whites. But black-white marriages remain the least common interracial marriage, accounting for 12 percent of new marriages in 2010. And that brings us to the bad news.

Despite the Movement of Some Blacks into the Upper Echelon of Political and Economic Life, the Majority Still Bear a Heavy Legacy of Disadvantage

African Americans have experienced significant declines in poverty and increases in access to middle-class jobs. Yet through almost the entire half century since passage of the Civil Rights Act the black unemployment rate has consistently remained twice as high as that of whites, and the poverty rate has been more than twice as high.

After declining in the 1970s, school segregation has increased again. Residential and economic segregation also remain strong. Among Americans born between 1985 and 2000, 31 percent of blacks, versus only one percent of whites, live in neighborhoods where 30 percent of the residents are poor.

African Americans have greatly increased their educational achievement over the past 50 years. But at every educational level, blacks earn less than whites with the same educational credentials.

And racial discrimination remains widespread. African-American men are far more likely to be arrested and to receive longer sentences than whites who commit the same offenses. A study of the low-wage job market in New York City found that white applicants were twice as likely as equally qualified blacks to receive a callback or job offer. White applicants who had just been released from prison were as likely to get a callback or job as black and Latino applicants with no criminal record!

These examples suggest a growing class polarization within the African-American community, alongside the continuing gap between the average fortunes of blacks and whites, with an elite group pulling away from the larger number of blacks who continue to experience racial profiling and deeper levels of poverty than whites. This raises the troubling possibility that the progress of one sector of the African-American community provides many Americans with an excuse to ignore the historical legacy of segregation and the persistence of racial discrimination for the black population as a whole.

For Further Information

For more detailed information including figures and graphs that illustrate fifty years of changes in civil rights, visit today’s papers (on Latino children, intermarriage, changing demographics, and African Americans) in the CCF Civil Rights Online Symposium on Changing Ethnic Realities since the Civil Rights Act (links on the top right sidebar). Stephanie Coontz was convener and editor of this symposium. The authors along with Stephanie Coontz are available for further information.

About CCF

The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions.

The Council helps keep journalists informed of notable work on family-related issues via the CCF Network. To join the CCF Network, or for further media assistance, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Co-Chair and Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223.

February 5, 2014

CCF Civil Rights Symposium: Changes in America’s Racial and Ethnic Composition Since 1964

By Raha Forooz Sabet
University of Miami

When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, racial differences in the United States were almost literally black and white. In the early 1960s, 85 percent of the population was white and 11 percent was black. Less than four percent of the population was Latino and less than six percent was foreign-born.

The biggest change since 1964 has been the growing diversification in America’s racial-ethnic makeup. The growth rate of the black or African-Americans has been slow, rising just two percentage points, from 11 to 13 percent. By contrast, the percentage of foreign-born Americans has more than doubled, so that they too represent 13 percent of the population.

Latinos now comprise 17 percent of the population and are the second largest racial and ethnic group after whites, with a population of about 51 million. This group is projected to triple in size by 2050, accounting for 60 percent of total population growth over a 45-year period.

Asians currently comprise just five percent of the population, but as of 2012 the Asian population was the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group. In 2050, they are projected to comprise nine percent of the total U.S. population.

There are about three million people who identify as American Indian and Alaska Native, while only 0.2 percent of the population identities as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. Almost 20 million people identify as “some other race.” And in the first decade of the 21^st century alone, the multiracial population grew by 33 percent, from 6.8 million in 2000 to 9 million in 2010.

Non-Hispanic whites are the largest racial and ethnic group in the U.S. However, this group is growing at the slowest rate, and the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2050 – in less than 40 years — non-Hispanic whites will be a minority, accounting for just 47 percent of the population. Already, 50 percent of children below age one are ethnic and racial minorities, and there are 14 states including New York, New Jersey and Florida, where the majority of births are to minorities.

For Further Information

For further information contact Raha Sabet (graduate student), Department of Educational and Psychological Studies, University of Miami; r.sabet@umiami.edu.

References

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32701.pdf

http://www.census.gov/population/race/

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb13-112.html

http://www.aging.senate.gov/crs/aging4.pdf

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/11/14/u-s-racialethnic-demographics-1960-today-and-2050/

http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/

http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-13.pdf

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2011/08/26-census-race-frey

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb12-90.html

Perez, Anthony Daniel and Charles Hirschman. 2009. “The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the US Population: Emerging American Identities,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Mar., 2009), pp. 1-51.

February 5, 2014

CCF Civil Rights Symposium: The State of Latino Children

By Rogelio Sáenz
University of Texas at San Antonio

Latinos are increasingly driving the demographic fortunes of the United States. Between 2000 and 2011, the number of white children in the country declined by 4.9 million, a decrease of 11 percent. Blacks and American Indians and Alaska Natives also saw their child populations decline. The nation’s total child population, however, increased by 1.7 million in the same period, largely due to the growth in the Latino child population. The number of Latino children rose by 5.1 million during this period (Figure 1), an increase of 42 percent. The number of multiracial and Asian and Pacific Islander children also expanded, but much less than the increase of Latino youth.

By 2060 it is projected that the proportion of white children will fall from 53 percent in 2012 to barely a third — just 33 percent (Figure 2). Latinos will have replaced whites as the nation’s largest child population, comprising almost 40 percent of the total. The black share of children is expected to decrease slightly from 14 percent to 13 percent during the period. The remaining 16 percent of children in 2060 will be largely Asian and multiracial youth.

Who are these Latino children? From Different Strands, But Deeply Rooted in the United States

Approximately 70 percent of Latino children, 12.1 million, are of Mexican origin (Table 1). Next in order are Puerto Ricans (1.6 million), Salvadorans (587,000), Dominicans (448,000), Cubans (394,000), Guatemalans (363,000), and Colombians (236,000).

Table 1. Latino Children by Ethnic Group, 2011.

Group	Number Children	Group	Number Children

Mexican	12,141,515	Nicaraguan	99,363
Puerto Rican	1,603,171	Venezuelan	67,169
Salvadoran	586,909	Argentinean	57,473
Dominican	448,041	Panamanian	39,395
Cuban	393,857	Chilean	35,115
Guatemalan	363,994	Costa Rican	32,318
Colombian	235,704	Bolivian	28,069
Honduran	199,528	Uruguayan	17,972
Spaniard	175,036	Paraguayan	6,008
Ecuadorian	163,054	Other	562,733
Peruvian	130,819

Total	17,386,243

Source: 2011 American Community Survey Public-Use File (Ruggles et al. 2010).

Despite the multitude of their countries of origin, more than 90 percent of Latino children were born in the United States or born abroad to U.S. citizens. Although the overwhelming majority are U.S. citizens, many Latino children have strong connections to the immigrant experience. Almost 54 percent of U.S.-born Latino children have at least one parent who was born outside of the United States. In addition, many Latino children live in mixed-status families and households, where some members are U.S.-born, others are naturalized U.S. citizens, and still others are undocumented immigrants. In this living arrangement some family members have access to resources—such as food stamps, healthcare, and so forth—while others do not.

The language patterns of Latino children reflect their deep roots in the United States but also the strong ties of many to their ancestral roots. Latino youth three to 17 years of age tend to be bilingual, with three-fifths speaking Spanish at home and being fluent in English, and slightly more than one-third speaking English at home (Figure 3). Only a small fraction (four percent of all Latino children and less than 12 percent even of foreign-born ones) cannot converse adequately in English.

Family and Household Arrangements of Latino Children

The majority of Latino children (54 percent) live in married-couple family households (Figure 4). Nearly a quarter live in family households headed by a single female and about one-sixth live either with a grandparent or with a single father.

One of the household strategies that families utilize to deal with limited financial resources is doubling up in the homes of relatives and friends. One-tenth of Latino children live as part of subfamilies in the home of another family.

Educational Challenges

Latinos have consistently lagged behind other racial and ethnic groups in educational achievement, in part because of their low pre-school enrollment, which means they often enter kindergarten behind other students. Only about one-fourth of Latino three-year-olds and a little more than half of four-year-olds are enrolled in school (Figure 5). Their white and black counterparts are much more likely to be enrolled in school at these ages, with nearly two-fifths and close to two-thirds of three- and four-year-olds, respectively, attending school.

Although high school completion rates have been improving for Latinos in the past decade, nearly 15 percent of Latinos 16 to 24 years of age do not have a high school diploma or GED and are not currently enrolled in school. Not all of these are high school dropouts, because some of these individuals may have come to the United States to work and never did “drop in” to school. But both U.S.-born Latinos and blacks 16 to 24 are twice as likely as their white counterparts to be dropouts, and Latinos overall are still three times more likely than whites to lack a high school diploma.

Work and Latino Youth

Historically, youth from minority and poor families were much more likely than whites, especially middle-class whites, to hold jobs. Over the past half century, that pattern has been reversed. Among Latino and black youngsters 16 and 17 years of age, only one-sixth are in the labor force, compared to more than a quarter of white youth. And among white youth, those from more economically secure families are more likely to be employed or actively seeking employment than those from poor families. It appears that today the high labor force participation rate of white youth may be part of constructing an extracurricular profile, the lack of which may add to the disadvantages of poorer youth.

However, once in the labor force, youth of color have much higher rates of unemployment than whites. Here Latinos are in the middle, with 45 percent unemployment rates compared to 55 percent for blacks and 27 percent for whites (Figure 6). These figures partly reflect different levels of poverty in these different racial-ethnic groups. Poor white youngsters also have a high unemployment rate (46 percent). Nevertheless, youth of color who are poor have particularly high unemployment rates (blacks, 66 percent; Latinos, 56 percent).

Thus, youth of color, especially the poor, are at a disadvantage in gaining employment experience, especially during the recent economic crisis. The lower labor participation rates of youth of color may reflect a higher prevalence of discouraged workers who exit the labor force after numerous attempts to secure employment.

Economic and Family Matters

More than one-third of Latino children are living in poverty, a rate that is slightly lower than the poverty rate of blacks and significantly higher than that of whites (Figure 7).

In general, children in female-headed family households are much more likely to be poor than children in married-couple households. Interestingly, however, the gap by household type is not as great among Latinos as among whites or blacks. Nearly a quarter of Latino children in married-couple families are poor, which suggests that marriage is not the solution to poverty issues in Latino communities. Latino families do not appear to receive the same degree of premium for having both parents at home that black and, especially, white families receive.

The Mortality Paradox of Latino Children

Latino children have many characteristics that are typically associated with problematic health and mortality outcomes. They tend to have low levels of educational attainment and high levels of poverty. In addition, Latino children are less than half as likely as white and black children to have health insurance. Approximately one in eight Latino youngsters lacks insurance (Figure 8). These indicators should predict significant health problems and relatively high levels of mortality among Latino children.

In fact, however, Latino children are quite healthy. Regardless of age, Latino children are less likely to die than white children and considerably less likely to die than black children (Table 2). Black infants, for example, are 2.3 times more likely than Latino children to die before reaching their first birthday. White youth between the ages of five and nine are 30 percent more likely to die than their Latino counterparts. Among both boys and girls, the life expectancy at birth of Latinos is higher than for their black or white counterparts.

Table 2. Death Rates by Age for Selected Groups, 2010.

	[Deaths Per 100,000 Persons]
Age Group	Latino	White	Black

Under 1	510.7	529.3	1,170.4
1 to 4	22.7	24.7	40.2
5 to 9	8.8	11.4	15.9
10 to 14	11.7	13.8	20.2
15 to 19	41.5	47.5	70.6

Source: Source: National Center for Health Statistics (Murphy et al. 2013).

Latino baby boys born in 2010 are estimated to live, on average, 2.1 more years than white baby boys and 7.1 more years than black baby boys (Figure 9). Latina baby girls born in 2010 are expected to live an average of 2.7 more years than white baby girls and 6.1 more years than black baby girls.

These favorable mortality patterns of Latino children exemplify the epidemiological paradox (also referred to as the Latino paradox) that was first observed approximately three decades ago. Despite having higher levels of poverty and lower access to health insurance, Latino infants and children tend to die at relatively low levels even compared to more advantaged white children.

The epidemiological paradox involving infant mortality is due primarily to foreign-born Latinas who, in particular, tend to give birth to healthy babies. Why do foreign-Latinas, despite their low socioeconomic status, have healthy babies? Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this epidemiological paradox. For example, Alberto Palloni and Jeffrey Morenoff (2001) suggest that women who migrate to the United States tend to be healthy and therefore have healthy babies. In addition, Dolores Acevedo-Garcia and her colleagues (2007) argue that Latina immigrant women hold on to more traditional and healthy cultural practices—e.g., high levels of family support, low levels of smoking and drinking, and so forth—leading to healthier babies. Alternatively, Palloni and Morenoff (2001) suggest that the paradox may be a statistical artifact: If immigrant women give birth along the border and return to Mexico after the baby is born, any deaths of such infants are recorded in Mexico, resulting in an undercounting of the actual death rate in the United States. While the verdict is still out on the explanation of the epidemiological paradox, I suspect that while all these hypotheses carry some weight, cultural practices associated with low levels of smoking and drinking are especially important in producing healthy babies. Yet the health advantage of immigrants, including Latinos, diminishes with increasing time in the United States, as they adopt American lifestyles and diets.

Conclusion

By 2020, nonwhite children as a whole will outnumber white children, with Latinos replacing whites as the nation’s single largest child population sometime between 2050 and 2060. It is already clear that Latinos are become an increasingly larger share of American students, workers, consumers, and voters. For this reason, it is crucial that policymakers develop policies and programmatic initiatives to ensure that Latino children succeed educationally and reach their full potential. While this report points to a need to improve access to education, health insurance, and jobs for Latinos, it also suggests that Latinos may offer a model for other Americans in protecting children from premature death. It is essential that Latino children be viewed as an asset rather than a liability, as children who are our children and our future. An investment in the future of these children—upwards of 90 percent born in the United States—will yield major returns in the form of an educated and competitive workforce and engaged citizenry.

For Further Information

For further information, contact Rogelio Sáenz, Dean for the College of Public Policy, University of Texas-San Antonio; Rogelio.Saenz@utsa.edu.

References

Acevedo-Garcia, Mah-J. Soobader, and Lisa F. Berkman. 2007. “Low Birthweight among U.S. Hispanic/Latino Subgroups: The Effect of Maternal Foreign-Born Status and Education.” Social Science & Medicine 65:2503-2516.

Antecol, Heather and Kelly Bedard. 2006. “Unhealthy Assimilation: Why Do Immigrants Converge to American Health Status Levels?” Demography 43 (2):337-360.

King, Miriam, Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Sarah Flood, Katie Genadek, Matthew B. Schroeder, Brandon Trampe, and Rebecca Vick. 2010. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey: Version 3.0. [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Accessed online on 16 December 2013 at https://cps.ipums.org/cps/.

Murphy, Sherry L., Jiaquan Xu, and Kenneth D. Kochanek. 2013. Deaths: Final Data for 2010. National Vital Statistics Reports 61 (4). Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. Accessed online on 19 December 2013 at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf.

Palloni, Alberto and Jeffrey Morenoff. 2001. “Interpreting the Paradoxical in the Hispanic Paradox: Demographic and Epidemiological Approaches.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 954 (1):140-174.

Ruggles, Steven, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. 2010. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Accessed online on 16 December 2013 at https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml.

U.S. Census Bureau. 2013. 2012 National Population Projections: Downloadable Files. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. Accessed online on 21 December 2013 at http://www.census.gov/population/projections/data/national/2012/downloadablefiles.html.

February 18, 2013

Latinas’ Mystiques

By Lorena Garcia
Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Illinois at Chicago
lorena@uic.edu

Latinas are often described as being either too devoted to their cultural values or not sufficiently connected to them. They are often told that they must choose “one of way of being,” either Latina or American. This expectation not only implies that there is an “authentic” Latina femininity and American femininity, but that their success depends on enacting the “right” femininity.

A prevailing mystique facing Latinas is that their “culture” holds them back from success and fulfillment. More specifically, they are told that machismo and familismo are to blame, respectively referring to an exaggerated expression of masculinity among Latino men and a strong emphasis placed on family that requires Latinas to be self-sacrificing. There are certainly aspects of Latinas’ cultural backgrounds that privilege men, but this is not unique to Latinas/os. Yet, this is the persistent narrative about Latinas’ challenges. This powerful mystique conveys to Latinas that they must reject their “culture” to be successful.

But numerous Latinas have demonstrated that rejection of their culture is not a prerequisite for pursuing professional and personal ambitions. U.S. Latinas have consistently described themselves as being caught between two worlds, that of their particular communities and that of the dominant society. And it is precisely because of this that Latinas can challenge the idea of an “authentic” Latina or American femininity. Latinas that resist the dichotomies imposed upon them understand that “culture” is not fixed and that they can create new cultural meanings and practices. For instance, some Latinas do not interpret their professional goals and their family as mutually exclusive. Instead, they sometimes link them together as a strategy for success. This way, a desire to “give back” to their families and communities fuels their motivation to persist despite the structural barriers they encounter, such as racist-sexist workplace practices.

In my interviews with 2nd generation working-class Mexican and Puerto Rican girls about their understandings of and approaches to safe sex, I found that the mystique that Latinas’ “culture” impedes their progress was also a condition that shaped how they made sense of their choices and those of other young Latinas. For instance, they interpreted the predicament of teen mothers to be caused by their willingness to adhere to cultural expectations of femininity that had prevented them from enacting sexual self-protective behaviors, such as condom use. The teen women I interviewed saw themselves as being more critical of aspects of their culture and therefore, “not like those girls.” Nevertheless, they still identified as Latinas, rejecting the notion that their sexual behavior reflected their Americanization. Their negotiations of their culture and future goals were connected to their awareness of the damaging stereotypes about Latina women. There is no denying that culture plays a role in defining Latinas’ lives, but it is not the only factor. We must also pay attention to how misrepresentations of “Latino culture” are utilized to produce this contemporary mystique facing Latinas because the misrepresentations’ power lies in shifting responsibility for success or failure solely onto Latinas, obscuring the social forces restricting their opportunities.