Detailed Project Description

This research project examines family and household relationships among Mexican origin Americans between 1880 and 1990, and contrasts these to those of other immigrant origin groups, such as Italians and Poles. Using a long historical perspective, the project will assess whether assimilation toward the family norms of natives characterized Mexican Americans in the same way as it did other ethnic groups. Census-based data sets provide the first representative samples of Mexican origin persons before 1970, and this series allows innovative comparative analyses across time. The research results should speak to both scholarship and policy issues, given the growing importance of the Mexican origin population in U.S. society and the health and social implications of family structure and assimilation.

Initial findings, focused on geographic settlement, intermarriage, and the family status of children, have provided several insights into the incorporation of Mexican American persons in the United States. First, settlement patterns reveal the overwhelming force of immigration in the distribution of the Mexican American population, and indicate the very rapid shift from young, male, and itinerant groups toward settled, sex-balanced communities. Intermarriage patterns indicate that, at least until 1960, Mexican Americans were highly endogamous, finding marriage partners among native Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants.

A similar dividing moment, situated in the 1960s, characterized the family status of children. In the period before 1970, when Mexican origin persons dominated the Hispanic population, families were nuclear and highly stable. Differences between Mexican origin families and native families were slight, and, like others of immigrant origin, Mexican Americans moved quickly toward native norms. In contrast to African Americans (and later to Puerto Ricans), Mexican origin children were highly likely to live in nuclear households in which both parents were present. Beginning around 1970, these conditions began to change, as they did for the native population itself. Subsequent rapid change (e.g., increases in female-headed households) among all Hispanics can be attributed to moderate declines in nuclear family structures among Mexican origin households and very sharp ones in the Puerto Rican population.

Looking at the living experiences of children and their mothers, at the development of female-headed households, and at intermarriage, we now center our inquiry on why the Mexican origin population exhibited so little change for nearly a century, why they have since experienced comparatively less change than other groups, and whether this more moderate change has important long-term and theoretical implications for the future of the family in the United States.