Although seemingly straightforward, regular phone conversations are not always easy to arrange. Not all parents have easy access to a phone in the United States. Many do not have land lines and either use cell phones or public pay phones. Nearly all use calling cards, which offer the best rates to Mexico, but numbers often ring busy during peak calling times.15 Also, parents have to ensure that their children have a place to receive their calls. Many do not have a home phone in Mexico and call their children at a neighbor’s home or at a local caseta. (A caseta is a small business in Mexico where people can receive phone calls from abroad for a minimal fee.) Despite technical difficulties, most parents interviewed, regardless of gender, reported calling home once a week, fitting calls around work schedules. Likewise, 61 percent of the children of migrants I surveyed in the Mixteca reported talking to their parents in the United States once a week or more. Children of migrants report more frequent phone communication with relatives in the United States than do children without migrant parents.16 There is no significant difference between children’s frequency of communication with migrant mothers and migrant fathers, nor in the frequency of phone calls reported by daughters and sons.17
Both mothers and fathers gave a similar checklist of things they discussed with their children over the phone. They ask about school, how siblings are behaving, and what things children want sent from the United States. School progress is particularly important to parents, and many offer material rewards to children who work hard in school. I listened to José, father to fifteen-year-old Brian, when he called home one Saturday. Brian answered the phone. José said hello and asked how Brian was doing. Then he asked when Brian would have his high school entrance exam. I assume he learned the date of the exam, because José next asked, “What do you want me to get you, a stereo or a tape player?” They discussed the benefits of each, and José concluded that a stereo was better and he would send that. He asked what else Brian would like as a gift before asking to speak to the boy’s grandmother.
Typical conversations also focus on the economic aspects of the parenting relationship and future migration plans. A migrant mother of four said her children “tell me they are good, and they ask me when I am going back there. . . . They ask me for shoes, clothes, toys and money.” A migrant father told me: “My son asks me when I am going back and asks me to send him money.” A migrant mother said her six-year-old says, “Take me north. I want to go north with you.”
Children’s versions of conversations with parents are surprisingly similar; differences in conversations are not dictated by the parent’s or the child’s gender, but rather by the child’s age. The youngest children talk mostly about material goods and migration. A six-year-old boy said that when his mother calls, “I ask when she is coming and she says she is coming soon.” A six-year old girl explained that her mother says “she is going to send clothes, a dresser, a bed and a mirror.” As children grow older, they talk with their parents about school performance and behavior. For example, an eleven-year-old girl who lives with her maternal grandmother and siblings said, “My mom asks if I want something—I say yes—clothes, shoes, and school supplies. Then she tells me not to hit my little sisters because my sister tells her that I hit her. But I hit her because she hits the youngest one.” The oldest children are concerned about parents’ emotional well-being, saying they talk about the family news and give and receive advice from their parents. Fifteen-year-old Brian described conversations with father José as follows: “[We talk about] how he is, that he works harder there because there are a lot of things to do. I tell him to work harder because he has been there a long time and hasn’t done much, and I tell him not to get discouraged, that he can trust us and tell me anything.”
Gifts
Although phone conversations are filled with talk of gifts, parents said they preferred to send money, as it is expensive to send goods either through mail services or via courier businesses. Most only sporadically send gifts with friends or relatives or bring things back on their own trips home. A father who had been migrating seasonally for seven years gave me the following list of items he takes to his wife and four children whenever he returns: one pair of shoes each, two to three sets of clothing for each child, toys (almost always remote control cars for the boys), and an electronic item, once a TV, another time a VCR, and most recently a video camera. Another migrant father said he collected random toys throughout the year to send to his four-year-old son. As proof, he disappeared into his basement bedroom to retrieve a small teddy bear from his collection to give to my son, Temo.
The most common gifts from parents are photographs, school supplies, clothing, and shoes. Among the students I surveyed in the Mixteca, 74 percent of those with migrant parents reported receiving emotionaltype gifts (like photographs or home videos) from the United States, 80 percent reported receiving clothing or shoes, and 59 percent reported receiving school supplies.18 There is no significant difference in the types of gifts they reported receiving from their migrant mothers and their migrant fathers.19 Daughters of U.S. migrants in the Mixteca more often reported receiving all types of gifts than did sons.20
Despite parents’ intentions to provide for their children by sending things from the states, children and grandparents said parents often get sizes wrong since they have been away so long. One grandmother gave me a pair of her grandson’s almost new shoes for Temo; her daughter had sent them two sizes too small. Tina said her father sends “clothes, shoes, toys, because he still thinks I am a little girl and I like them.” The twelve-year-old rolled her eyes, pointing to a row of Barbie dolls on a shelf in the room. “But,” she added, “my cousin likes to play with them.” Age-inappropriate gifts exemplify the ways parents lose track of their children’s development over time, signaling the time dislocations characteristic of parent-child separations.
Children may also feel embarrassed about the material aspect of their relationship with their parents. When I asked what kinds of things they want their parents to send them, many children grew shy and simply answered “I don’t know.” Tina said that she does not ask her father for much: “What I ask for, he sends. But I try not to ask for much.” When I asked a six-year-old if he asked his mom for toys, he answered defensively, “Not me,” causing his five-year-old sister to object and call him a liar. Children seem aware that material objects are not equivalent to parental affection, and some are wary of parents’ use of gifts as replacements for time together.
At the same time, children recognize parents’ gifts as markers of love. One fourteen-year-old girl, for example, told me she does not love either her mother or her father. Her parents are divorced, and both have remarried and live in the United States. She said she was most uncomfortable with her father, who recently had tried to reestablish a relationship. Her maternal grandmother, the girl’s caregiver, told me a story of a small jewelry box with a gold locket inside that the girl’s father had recently sent: “It was a small box. And we had just read in a book about a father who gave his daughter a small box, like that one, but it had nothing inside. Supposedly every time the girl opened the box, she would receive a kiss from her father. So [she] joked that the box her father sent her was like that; she would keep it in her dresser and open it when she wanted a kiss.” As this grandmother eloquently concluded, gifts “make them [children] feel special and loved. But the gifts don’t inspire love from children for their parents. They cannot bring trust and affection.”
Remittances
Gifts are symbolically significant.21 But money is the most important item both mothers and fathers send home. In New Jersey, mothers and fathers reported similar frequency of remittances: once or twice a month. However, parents were reluctant to disclose the amount of remittances and were more sensitive about financial matters than about their undocumented status, which other scholars of Mexican migration have also noted.22 Most mothers and fathers were vague or dismissed my questions about the amount of remittances by giving what seemed to be generic answers. While other research suggests that women send less money home than men do but send a larger proportion of their income, among the parents I interviewed, variations in reported remittances were greater among mothers and among fathers than between them.23
Among the children I surveyed in the Mixteca, 96 percent of