Gender Roles and Family Life
in Mexican-American Families
In Mexican-American families it seems that the male are superior to the female members.
Sandra Cisneros supports this idea because she views her six brothers as equal to her father. She once said, "[I] was born to ‘7 fathers’ ".The origins of Machismo in Mexico and the explanation of gender roles are discussed in
Matt Lerner’s analysis.In the traditional
family structure, the father or oldest male person is the head of the household. He also is the decision-making authority.The mother is the care taking part of the Mexican-American family. She has a great influence on her children and she is supposed to behave in a respectable manner.
Sandra Cisneros calls the
traditional Mexican woman, a fierce woman, who may be victimized, but also very strong. She expresses that in one of her books, a poetry collection (Loose Woman, 1994), where she offers a portrait of a fiercely proud, independent woman of Mexican heritage. Once in an Interview she said "I am a woman and I am a Latina. Those are things that make my writing distinctive."The children are expected to be obedient, respectful and to work hard, so they will do "better" than the previous generation.
