Immigrant Mothers Vs Transnational Mothers

Immigration affects families in many different ways. In the book “Enrique’s Journey” by Sonia Nazario, family is a core element. After Enrique’s mother leaves for the U.S., the whole concept of their family gets distorted. The walking out of Enrique’s father and the abandonment of his grandmother help to disband the family even more. Enrique also threatens to repeat the same mistakes his family made with his daughter when he considers leaving her behind in Honduras. Family is the central theme in Enrique’s Journey because of his relationship and resentment with his mother, the rejection of his father and grandmother, and Enrique’s decision to leave his daughter, Jasmin, behind.

Living in Mexico throughout her teen years was very rough. Unlike other teenagers where their parents constantly provide for their children, Marisela’s life was a lot different than the usual parent- child relationship. She lived with her Abuela ( Grandma) Lupe, along with her 3 brothers and sister. She constantly had to take care of her brothers and sister at such a young age, that she became the mother-like figure of the

This large disparity in pay encourages the discerning idea that children living in the Third World might be better off without a mother physically with them. Survival is dependent on funds for necessities rather than love and affection. When mothers can’t provide both money and affection for their family simultaneously, they face reality and choose one. And while it may be sad, the obvious choice is that which will nourish their family more effectively, money. While these mothers choose to move to First world countries, no other wants to abandon their children, Hochschild says, “most [mothers] feel the separation acutely, expressing guilt and remorse to the researchers who interview them” (Hochschild 21). However, economic predicaments coerce these choices. Hochschild depicts these economically coerced choices by sharing the story Rowena Bautista a Filipino mother who left her own children to nanny two new children in the United States. By choosing to provide for her family Rowena has consequently missed watching her children grow up. She has even missed holidays with her children, and in turn, the bond between her and her children suffers. While First World mothers are returning to work to provide for their children, Third World immigrant caregivers are filling

In the Foreword, she brings the reader to a day in 1997, when her cleaning woman Carmen reveals that she has four children in Guatemala, whom she has not seen in twelve years. Nazario is stunned. She cannot understand how a mother could so walk away from her young children, but Carmen then presents a reality the author will soon investigate and know to be ordinary. Since the 1960s, untold numbers of Central American mothers, often abandoned by their husbands, come to America to take any work available (Nazario xiii). In the late 20th century, then, and as American women were entering the workforce more and more, supply met demand and the illegal immigrant mothers found work as house cleaners and nannies. As Carmen expresses, nonetheless, the distance is almost unbearable and these mothers intensely feel the distance from their children. As the novel also reinforces, the children similarly experience the pain of separation, which goes to another form of “immigration”; basically, and often at very young ages, they risk their lives to join their mothers. Most importantly, then, and as Nazario is further moved by the true tale of Carmen's son Minor, Enrique's Journey actually documents an ongoing situation based on inequality and injustice. The novel is then completely based on the realities researched by the

In Mexico, parents play a key role in shaping daily life through the style of relationship they maintain with their children and the family climate that promotes. Within a traditional family, the mother is the one who stays in the home, while the father is the one who goes to work to

Marianne Weber argued that marriage was the linchpin of patriarchal domination as women were being dominated by their husbands. According to Weber, once a woman married they were seen as property of their husband. Women being addressed or seen as “property” was supported by “legal codes…religion and the economy” (Inst. Comments), which I believe that it made it difficult to see any positive changes. Women were dependent on their husbands for economic support, which gave them more power over their partner’s and their overall household. Weber argued that “the wife is economic dependent of her husband… Even in cases where she works, full – or part-time, her income typically is only a fraction of his” (L&N 206).Even though women who work do not make as much money as their husbands, I agree with Weber, that those women who have an external money supply do become more independent, although they are not getting paid as much as their partner. Women’s employment opportunities outside the home have helped

Each year, thousands of Central American immigrants embark on a dangerous journey from Mexico to the United States. Many of these migrants include young children searching for their mothers who abandoned them. In Enrique’s Journey, former Los Angeles Times reporter, Sonia Nazario, recounts the compelling story of Enrique, a young Honduran boy desperate to reunite with his mother. Thanks to her thorough reporting, Nazario gives readers a vivid and detailed account of the hardships faced by these migrant children.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate for single parents in 2009 was 37.1%, while the rate for married couples with children was 6.8%. This means that being raised in a married family reduces a child’s probability of living in poverty by 82%. Policies that can be implemented to strengthen marriage would be ones that educate the public on the benefits of marriage to financial stability and child development. Returning to economic policies, the welfare system has penalties against marriage within it that create incentives to not get married. Since benefits are reduced as a family’s income rises, a single mother will receive more benefits than if she had an employed husband in the home. For low-income couples, this means that marriage would cause a decline in welfare benefits and an overall decline in the couple’s joint income. In order to remove these disincentives, the welfare system could be changed to increase the value of earned income tax credit for married couples with children. Work requirements can again be of assistance by making it so able-bodied parents are required to or look for work in order to receive aid. This will prevent the appeal of using welfare as an alternative to work or marriage. By implementing these ideas, marriage will increase and poverty and welfare dependence will

The article titled, "I'm Here, but I'm There": The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila, discusses how Transnational Motherhood is reconstructing the ideology of what it mean to be a mother. Due to financial necessity mothers from Central America and Mexico are moving to the United States for jobs. They are not trying to reside in the United States permanently. Their ultimate goal is to make enough until for their children and families to be stable financially before heading back home. I find this research interesting because these women have set aside the emotional aspect of mothering that relies on physical affection and care and focused being the primary financial provider their

Through the use 40 qualitative in-depth interviews Viruella-Fuentes examines the transnational practices of first-generation Mexican immigrant women as well as second generation women residing in a largely Mexican neighborhood in Southwest Detroit. The author argues that although women in this study do not really engage in transnational practices, but it is those transnational ties that contributes to the social and cultural resources that they have access when navigating their United States realities. I am interested in the gendered dimensions of these practices, for first generation women their priorities were to maintain ties and a sense of belonging, therefore with they enacted caregiving work that cut across borders, something that seems

As the women’s liberation movement has prolonged and women have been given increasingly larger roles in society, some ideas of what women’s responsibilities should be remain the same. For example, many people believe or expect women to be a submissive partner in a heterosexual relationship. This can cause misunderstandings and traumatic experiences for both partners involved when one partner does not fit the expectations of the other. Moreover, when those relationships involve children, those expectations can manifest again and can affect the wellbeing of the child. These challenges specifically show themselves in the lives of migrant women who leave home to work as nannies or become wives.

The idea that a woman’s job is to be a wife and mother is old-fashioned, but not completely out of style. Though these roles require a great deal of talent, resilience, patience, love, and strength, to name a few, they are often underestimated or depicted as simple. Especially in modern times, many women in the United States who stay home to raise a family are viewed as anti-feminists, whereas women in Latin America are not criticized for similar actions. In recent decades, more Latin American women have started to break the mold, daring to be both sexy, and successful in the workforce, while remaining pillars of domestic life.

The book, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage, was written by two professors of sociology, Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, who were studying the lives of poor, unmarried mothers. Their goal in this book is to address the typical rationale many Americans have in regards to the decisions made by women of this specific socioeconomic status. They start by stating, “Many Americans believe a whole host of social ills can be traced to the lapse in judgement that a poor, unmarried woman shows when she bears a child she can’t afford.” They then continue with the “solution” that the mainstream society believes is for them to “wait to have children until they are older and more economically stable, and they should get married

The main problem for lack of employment for most of women in the entire world that they mainly focus on their family instead of dreaming for their future or working to gain money since they rely on their husbands for living. Recently in October 2015, women’s unemployment rates increases as they pass the adulthood since most of them get married so they get responsibilities to be parents, so fathers will work and mothers will focus on raising their children for marvelous education. In addition, the reason behind the unemployment rates of women is that seventy percent of them choose to marry someone with superb financial position in the community in preference of relying on their own work. ‘Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we have always had which is work or prison.’(Tim Allen). According to Tim Allen most men believe that women do not have the capabilities to be able to work, because they have the choice to work or to just wait for the perfect man to marry her, spends all the saving he suffered in his life for her, and this affects

What I have learned about the migrant family is that subsequently entitled Migrant Mothers, Lang's photograph has become not only the best-known image of the 270,00 plus negatives assembled by her Resettlement /Farm security Administration team, but no one of the the most universally recognized and appreciated photographs of all time this is what I´v learned from the Migrant Mother. I also, agree with the idea that Dorothea Lange´s photographed the woman and her family from a detached perspective in the woman and her three children, stranded in a roadside canvas lean-to such critics suggest, Lange found a subject for her photographic art that is a subject removed in time. In March 1936 after a month in the field Lange was heading north to San