Claudia wailed. The other family members followed and separated the couple. I sat shocked at the ugly face of violence and how it had caught me unawares. Then a small figure came out of the bedroom, rubbing his eyes to see what had happened. This got me to my feet, and I took the eleven-year-old boy—Efrén and Claudia’s oldest son—back to bed. I sat with the boy in the dark until the voices outside seemed more subdued.
Feeling out of place in this family affair, I eventually emerged from the bedroom and spoke to both Claudia, who was being pampered by the female relatives in one room, and Efrén, calming down with a beer and his cousin in the outer room. I briefly gave Claudia a supportive hug while she dabbed her eyes. With a nasty resolve she told me this was not the first time he had picked a fight and left her with problems. “Nunca le voy a perdonar [I will never forgive him].” When I apologized for being a part of the situation, Claudia shook her head and replied bitterly, “Nadie tiene la culpa menos él [No one is at fault but him].”
I spoke at greater length with Efrén. I said that he should not worry and that I would forget about the whole incident for my book. Efrén disagreed.
But—and you can write this in your book—that I, if right or not, will not accept that my woman intervene in my house. I try to be a little educated, and really I am a pretty tranquil man. Everyone can tell you this. It is rare that I get agitated like this. And I know I am being the typical machista man. Pero, simplemente es mi casa, y soy yo en frente, y no acepto que mi mujer intervenga en eses asuntos. [But, it is simply my house, and I am at its head, and I do not accept that my woman intervenes in these affairs.]
Eventually, I left with Claudia’s “Nunca le voy a perdonar” and Efrén’s “No acepto que mi mujer intervenga en eses asuntos” pounding in my head.
GENDER ROLES IN MIGRANT FAMILIES
Efrén and Claudia’s relationship was not as one-dimensional as this incident suggests. In fact, Efrén and Claudia reconciled the next day and noticeably enjoyed each other’s company every time I saw them together afterward. Unlike other couples who frequently complained about their partners, Efrén and Claudia quite often expressed their great love for each other over the four years I knew them. And although Efrén was “machista” in some ways, he supported Claudia’s work as a schoolteacher in a town where it was unusual for women to work outside the home. Yet this dramatic incident between them illustrates how complicated family relationships can be, involving feelings of deep pain and hurt alongside those of profound love and support, when they are strained during periods of separation. In Mexico, as in the United States, approximately one in four women have experienced physical violence from an intimate partner, as did Claudia.2 Although a painful feature of family life, domestic violence is not the focus of this book. Rather, I highlight the confrontation between Claudia and Efrén because it illustrates one of the major sources of tension in migrant couples that in this case erupted in an incident of physical violence. Mexican families have been characterized as highly valuing family unity, or familism [familismo], and as adhering to rather clearly defined gender roles, with men as providers and women as caregivers.3 These roles must be renegotiated during periods of migration.4
Specifically, when married couples live apart, men’s and women’s authority in their families may come into conflict. Men’s power in families is achieved mostly via honorable economic provision.5 As evident in Efrén’s comments, Mexican men, even when they are loving fathers, feel their masculinity is tied to some degree to their ability to be macho.6 When fathers migrate, they act honorably in the face of economic adversity, sacrificing their own comforts for the sake of their family. For men like Efrén, migration legitimizes their power as head of the household.
In contrast, women’s authority in Mexican families is related to their morality as the primary family caregiver. Women’s roles as caregivers are celebrated and likened to the self-sacrificing characteristics of the Virgin of Guadalupe—Mexico’s incarnation of the Virgin Mary.7 Latin American scholars describe this culturally specific version of maternity as marianismo. According to this ideal, a woman should be self-negating and a martyr for her children, because she is spiritually and morally superior to men.8 When men migrate alone, women must adjust to their husband’s absence by assuming full responsibility for the family and home, which involves a great deal of sacrifice. One mother explained how she achieved moral superiority while her husband was away: “I learned how to earn respect from men. . . . I learned how important it is to defend oneself and one’s honor as a woman.” Women like Claudia feel it is a slap in the face for their husband not to recognize this sacrifice and respect the authority they must assume at home and in the wider community while the husband is away.
It thus seems inevitable that fathers’ migrations cause some conflict in marital relationships as women and men must reconcile gender role expectations with the realities of living apart.9 Indeed, gendered adaptations to male-led migration patterns are well documented, as are incidents of marital conflict resulting from migration.10 While it is understandable that migration causes conflicts between women and men, the way gendered expectations influence mothers’ and fathers’ relationships with children has been largely disregarded. Too often children like Efrén and Claudia’s son hiding under his covers in the back bedroom are depicted as a sidebar to the marital drama that arises during migration. Although child rearing is a crucial phase in the process by which gender differences are constructed and maintained, gendered expectations in parenting when women join men abroad as family breadwinners have yet to be fully explored.11
In this chapter I bring one dimension of inequality in families divided by borders to the fore: that which results from the differences between Mexican mothers’ and fathers’ migrations. The comparison of motherhood and fatherhood shows that differences in gender roles diminish when parents and children are separated due to migration. In analyzing migrant parents’ efforts to maintain contact with their children over time, I show that mothers’ and fathers’ interactions with children are quite similar.12 Yet parenting from afar is not equal for mothers and fathers. Mothers and fathers differ in their processes of leaving and returning home, affecting their relationships with the children who remain in Mexico. Moreover, family members’ evaluations of migrant mothers and fathers are colored by conventional gendered expectations. In other words, although gender role differences diminish during periods of separation, gender continues to shape parent-child relationships. While parents and children live apart, family members ascribe meanings to their interactions, what sociologists have called “doing gender,” in a way that reinforces the expectations that mothers be family caregivers and fathers be family providers.13 Ultimately, migrant mothers bear the moral burdens of family separation to a much greater degree than fathers do.
MANAGING SEPARATION
Given descriptions of conventional gender roles in Mexican families, I was surprised to find that migrant mothers’ and fathers’ experiences converge in parenting their children across borders.14 Their methods for staying in touch with children are remarkably similar. Separated from their children, mothers and fathers rely on the same three techniques to communicate with their children: weekly phone conversations, the sending of gifts, and regular remittances. Physical separation results in standardized mechanisms of transnational parenting. Mothers and fathers also perceive similar risks associated with changes in their family life abroad to