Single mothers also find that migration gives them the opportunity to reinvent themselves. Young unwed mothers in particular feel they have few opportunities to get married in Mexico. In many Mexican rural towns, brides are quite young. In San Ángel, one nineteen-year-old daughter of a migrant mother told me that all her friends were already married with children. “I feel like I should already be married.” Another nineteen-year-old woman, who had been married at age seventeen to a twenty-six-year-old man who had previously been in the United States, explained why she felt glad to be married to a migrant. “At my age, no one would even look at me. They all want young girls.” The preference for young brides leaves single mothers out in the cold. Not only are they described as masisa, or overripe fruit, but since they are no longer virgins and have already been “eaten,” they are no longer marriage material.99 A twenty-year-old single mother I met in Mexico hoped to migrate within the year and eventually remarry. In Mexico, she explained, “They [men] don’t think of you as a real thing; they see you as easy. And if they want me and love me, it has to be the whole package.” In New Jersey, only one single mother I interviewed lived alone; the other seven, as well as the three mothers who divorced their husbands after migrating, lived with boyfriends. Migration offers single mothers a chance to start over.100
Mothers Leaving Children
As married and single mothers come to the United States expecting economic and lifestyle changes, they are typically more open to the idea of bringing their children to the United States than are fathers. Yet mothers feel they cannot do so immediately. For one, knowing they are migrating primarily to work, they worry about child care. One mother, for example, explained why she left her children: “Well, you also have to have a place to put them.” Some married mothers are determined to take their children with them, until family members dissuade them. Ofelia said her mother reminded her that she did not know where she would live or who would be able to take care of her two-year-old son. Migration with children adds greater uncertainty not only about child care but also about health care and the educational system, particularly for the undocumented. Migrant parents are aware that U.S. immigration policy has become increasingly strict and punitive since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.101 Mothers believe they will be more prepared to bring their children into a new and potentially hostile environment once they have learned to navigate life abroad.
Mothers also worry greatly about the undocumented crossing.102 One said, “I wouldn’t risk taking them via the mountain.” Crossing the U.S.-Mexican border without papers is considered to be more dangerous for women than for men.103 When women’s physical safety is entrusted to paid smugglers, the risk of rape, either by smugglers or by other men crossing with them, is omnipresent. The crossing is, however, even more dangerous and expensive for children.104 Young children may be confined to small spaces, or even given medicines to make them sleep, in order to facilitate the crossing.105 Risks for children at the border include experiencing human rights abuses, getting lost, sustaining injury or death, and being caught by officials.106 Indeed, border enforcement policies have made the crossing even riskier for minor children, with the number of children returned to Mexico by border officials skyrocketing over the past few years.107 As one mother summarized: “I didn’t know what the crossing would be like. For me, I knew I could do it, but not for them.”
Aside from the difficulties related to the border crossing and child care, technological advances may make Mexican mothers more willing to leave their children for a temporary period. The immediacy of communication means that mothers know they will be able to wire money via services like Western Union in response to minor crises, such as children’s illnesses.108 In addition, despite practical difficulties, most migrants can arrive home by air after a day of travel, and some do when their parents or children become seriously ill. New technologies foster migrant parents’ ability to respond to family emergencies even from abroad. Satellite technology also makes communication possible for families living in even the remotest spots (without phone lines) through cellular phones.109 Knowing that they can talk to their children over the phone at any time may make mothers more willing to endure a temporary separation, whether by reuniting with a spouse already abroad or, for single mothers, by becoming the primary family breadwinner.110
Migrant mothers and fathers who leave their children in Mexico are not acting impulsively out of desperation. They are proactive. They weigh the economic opportunities available in the United States, as well as the personal benefits they may gain from migration, with the costs of bringing children with them. But mothers and fathers arrive at the decision to leave their children in different ways. Men reason they can best fulfill their economic roles by migrating. Knowing their lives will be all about work is enough reason to leave their children in Mexico. For mothers, the decision to migrate arises out of a combination of economic and family considerations; a busy work schedule, the border crossing, and the insecurity of living in the United States without legal documents is not enough to deter migrating with their children except temporarily. Mothers make the choice knowing they will be able to communicate regularly with their children in Mexico for what they expect to be the short time before they are reunited.111
UNEQUAL LIVES
When parents move to the land of opportunity without their children, they purposely divide their families with the idea that doing so is the best economic strategy for the family as a unit. It would be a mistake, however, to consider the family as a discrete unit of analysis during the time parents and children live apart. Parents’ and children’s day-to-day experiences are not equal. Inequalities within families are not straightforward.112 Geography complicates families already stratified by gender and age distinctions.
On the one hand, parents live difficult lives; they have busy schedules and live in uncomfortable, overcrowded places. Many parents reside in unsafe neighborhoods where their movements, and particularly those of children, are restricted. Working all the time, parents have little time to enjoy themselves or spend time with their families and friends, as is common in Mexico. Because of their legal status, they lose everyday privileges they had enjoyed in Mexico. They cannot easily drive and obtain car insurance. They cannot take a trip on an airplane. Men, in particular, may feel less free to frequent public spaces than they were in Mexico.113 Migrants’ lives are constrained. In this sense, as low-wage, undocumented workers in the United States, parents experience a drop in social standing and in quality of life when they migrate.114
On the other hand, when parents migrate, they have access to resources not available to their children who remain in Mexico. At a very rudimentary level, parents enjoy amenities associated with life in an industrialized nation, even if to a much lesser degree than enjoyed by U.S. citizens. No one I interviewed, for example, washed clothes by hand in New Jersey; they used Laundromats. In San Ángel, most families washed by hand, or—if they were able to purchase a washing machine with remittances—rinsed by hand and hung the clothes out to dry. Parents I interviewed also had access to hot water, something few families in San Ángel enjoy. Most parents lived in heated homes and had room air conditioners in the summer months. While heaters are not necessary in San Ángel, where temperatures in the summer months often exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, when I was in town no one had air conditioners. Parents also have access to employment opportunities that are nonexistent in Mexico (even if the opportunities can bear fruit only in Mexico). At the lower rungs of the social ladder in New Jersey, parents are optimistic that improvements in their lives are possible. They feel, for example, that by working hard and learning English, they may find a sympathetic employer or a job with benefits. They are hopeful that Americans will recognize their contributions to the economy and that eventually immigration laws will change, allowing them to regularize their legal status. Parents feel that with time, opportunities will increase. Children, in contrast, feel that their lives in Mexico are stagnant. Benefits from their parents’ remittances are ultimately limited.