The new Latino fatherhood: What fatherhood models do Latino fathers adopt?
Much of the research on Latino fathers has focused on immigration, criminality, and poverty, and there is a predominant view of Latino fathers as inexpressive, and disciplinarian. Fatima Suarez, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, recently gave a talk at the Clayman Institute on her new book, Latino Fathers: What Shapes and Sustains Their Parenting. In her research, Suarez centers what fatherhood means to Latino men in the United States, arguing that there is a “new Latino fatherhood” model often missing from current discourses.
Suarez conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 60 Latino fathers in California between 2018 and 2019 to explore Latino fathers’ “own interpretations of fatherhood and how they navigate the social landscape that shapes their parenting.” The 60 participants identified as cisgender men; 59 identified as heterosexual, and most of them were of Mexican descent. In researching this specific population, Suarez intends to inform policy, education, health, and a deeper understanding of family life.
Fatherhood models are multiple but there seems to be a predominant model that is carved into our imaginaries. In the scholarship, there is a consensus that a new fatherhood was produced as economic crises developed, unemployment among men increased, and more women joined the workforce. Men had to involve themselves more in the domestic sphere. Generally, men transformed into more “emotionally expressive, nurturing, and egalitarian” as new demands on them were made. This has become the dominant father ideal. Suarez essentially asks how Latino fathers grapple with this dominant ideal of fatherhood and what it means for them as Latino men. In her presentation, Suarez presented data from the book’s first three chapters: economic hardships and urbanity and the concomitant struggles with fatherhood; childhood experiences vis-à-vis their own fathers; and how intergenerational migratory experiences shaped their parenting.
Labor inequalities shape how Latino fathers engage parenting. Suarez provided three examples of how Latino fathers navigate their familial dynamics considering socioeconomic and labor demands. Octavio, who grew up poor in Oaxaca, and wanted to provide to his children in the United States a “middle-class standard of living, particularly conspicuous consumption,” had to make personal sacrifices. Because he was unable to afford his son’s and daughter’s expenses, he saved money by shopping in local thrift stores. At the pressure of his children to buy himself clothing whenever they went to the mall, he would make excuses: he did not like mall clothing. Economic constraints did not undermined Octavio’s fathering.
In contrast, Santino, who is a father from Peru, had a complicated fathering experience because of his job in construction. Santino lives in Riverside County with his family in a two-story house in the suburbs. Because construction work requires many hours of labor and Santino had to commute to work at different sites across greater Los Angeles, family quality time was deficient. For example, sometimes Santino arrived at home around 5 p.m., but because he had to wake up at 3 a.m. to make a lengthy drive, he would take a quick dinner and get ready for bed. Gael had a more privileged situation than Octavio or Santino. As a college professor, Gael’s schedule was much more flexible and had the luxury to accommodate childcare. Gael was circumscribed to the domestic sphere as a result, breaking with traditional expectations of manhood. This also had its costs, however: as a professor, Gael’s tenure promotion suffered.
Another theme Suarez discussed was how Latino fathers reflected on and resignified their own relations with their fathers. She uncovered how complex and ambivalent feelings surfaced when the men shared memories about their fathers. A new fatherhood here is demarcated, for to exercise a new way of caring for their children, new fathers must draw a distinction between their new ways of fathering and their own father’s parenting. Suarez introduced a new concept to capture the ways in which fathers negotiate between an old and a new model of fathering: hybrid marginalized masculinity.
In carving a paternal identity, Suarez emphasized how fathers “reproduce gender, race, class, and sexual inequalities by shifting rather than dismantling normative understandings of proper manhood.” Suarez buildt on the notion of “hybrid masculinities,” which refers to how privileged men adopt characteristics of progressive or marginalized masculinities to display non-dominant modes of masculinities. However, Suarez considered with her concept how marginalized men, like the Latino fathers, reproduced rather than destabilized dominant notions of masculinity, propagating inequality. Fathers deployed a “discursive alibi” that, in distancing themselves from older masculine tradition like that of their fathers, they critique the behaviors but also pardon them because “it was a different time.”
For instance, Miguel, 45, from Central Mexico, characterized his father as reserved and unemotional. In his interviews, Miguel said he never saw his dad cry. Miguel’s father was, moreover, absent; when he was not at work, he was hanging out, drinking, with his friends. Miguel now cries in front of his children; he does not drink and motivates himself to spend time with them. Yet, Miguel recognizes that “it was a different era,” that he does not have 10 children like his father did, and that, because of the changing times, he does not consider his father “as bad.” Miguel is apologetic of his father’s care toward him, forgiving, so to speak, of his father’s dominant masculinity that caused him harm. Miguel critiques his father but protects his father’s gendered behavior, allowing Miguel to distance himself from his father’s model of masculinity and leaving intact gender normativity.
Suarez introduced two more concepts to understand how Latino men position themselves vis-à-vis their fathers. The first is “childhood frame of reference.” Latino fathers evaluate their own ways of fathering by reflecting on their fathers’ parenting. What is more, Latino fathers used these memories and experiences of childhood to improve their parenting. Suarez calls this “intergenerational corrective fatherhood.” The ideal childhood Latino fathers strive to provide, however, has its drawbacks. Santos, a second-generation Mexican-American father, expressed worry on how “a familial history of struggle” could be lost. Santos, but also many Latino fathers, communicated how their kids could become too individualistic and self-indulgent because of the lack of hardships.
In her talk, Suarez revealed how Latino parenting is shaped by many social forces, and how fathers negotiate between models of fatherhood and masculinities to provide the best form of parenting to their children.
