Americanized Children

In the article entitled “Finding the Bicultural Balance: Immigrant Latino Mothers Raising ‘American’ Adolescents” by Yolanda Quinones-Mayo and Patricia Dempsey, Quinones- Mayo and Dempsey discuss the barrier between immigrant mothers and their “American” adolescents because the American society teaches the adolescents to become independent from their mothers (2). The article itself presents the social work analysis of the relationship between the mother and child respectively based off the Latino culture, as well as the adaptiveness of the adolescent to American culture. Specifically, Quinones-Mayo and Dempsey argue that the strain in the relationship between immigrant mothers and their “Americanized” children is caused by American idealism.

Quinones-Mayo and Dempsey contend that sexism within Latino culture stems from a notion called “machismo” (5). “Machismo” is the pride men in Latino culture hold to make women feel inferior to them through their power and ego. “Machismo” is said to be applied within the parenting of girls versus the raising of boys in the sense that girls are seen as fragile and barred of independence, rather than boys who experience more freedom as they are seen as superior to girls within the notion of “machismo” (6). Perhaps, this implies the lack of emotional connection between the “Americanized” female adolescent and the Latino immigrant mother, because these sheltered lives that these “Americanized” female adolescents live through can cause resentment towards the parent. The female adolescent would be limited on how she could carry out her life daily, which could prove to be detrimental to her social skills, as well as hinder her knowledge of the world that surrounds her limiting the “independence” America advertises in

Although Quinones-Mayo and Dempsey do not include a concrete evidence of what the American Dream is, they showed the harsh realities of America being poverty, drug problems, uncleanliness, and unsafe dynamics the adolescents and Latino immigrant mothers must face, rather than the “milk and honey” that is promised (2,10). This American reality denotes that there is a connection between the adolescents change in behavior to that of the environment surrounding them (5). The American reality may be the influential factor of the adolescents not wanting to take on the part in the social success of the family (10). The responsibility of growing up too fast also serves as the connection between the lack of involvement to achieving their Latino immigrant mother’s goal of the success and improvement of the adolescent’s future. As Quinones-Mayo and Dempsey continue to maintain Latinos tend to be raised from a young age the becoming of an adult (11). This evidence shows the implication that in Latino culture one must be raised a definitive, rigid way through customs of who to become instead of finding themselves through individualism like in American