Breaking Traditions by Ricardo Cacho

The Hispanic culture is full of customs and traditions that are incorporated into the daily life of thousands of families. Gender roles in the household is one of these traditions. The father has the job to provide financially and protecting his family, while the mother has to maintain the household clean along with other chores, raise the children, and keep her husband happy. We can see this displayed throughout Sandra Cisneros novel “The House on Mango Street”. We see many aspects of gender roles in all the characters, but we also see how some characters break this tradition along with the reaction of their decision. So is how are gender roles in Hispanics culture today dealt with or does it even exist anymore? Do women still have the binding role that their mothers and grandmothers had to pull through most of their life? What is the result of breaking the gender role tradition? The biggest debate in Hispanic culture is whether this is for the better or for worse.

            The term Machismo comes from “macho” which is used to describe a tough strong man who has an authoritative position in the household. They are expected to be strong enough to be able to protect their family from danger. This image of a strong man is not only physically but emotionally as well. Men are not expected to show emotions because they are thought to be emotionally strong like a rock. This is where men get the role as man of the house in which they consider themselves financially responsible to provide for their family. Although men were supposed to protect their family, before domestic violence was taken seriously, they use to beat their wives. Now there are more laws protecting women but there are still men who believe they are more superior to women.

        Women are expected to be like the Virgin Mary submissive, nurturing, taking care of her husband. On top of that women are expected to maintain the household clean, raise the children, along with other chores and feed her family. On top of all the responsibilities there are traditions where mothers have to begin to teach their daughters how to become a woman, teaching them how to cook, and help raise siblings. The eldest woman of a family is also responsible to live with her parents until she begins her own family, and when the parents are too old to take care of themselves they expect the eldest daughter to welcome them to her home. Women have a very significant role in the household and many believe that they are not appreciated for the binding job as a mother; a huge motive for girls to take advantage of the freedom from this traditional gender role.

     The role women have in a house hold is referred as Marianismo, “meaning that they are religious, self-sacrificing, and responsible for running the household,”(Vick, King). With many of Hispanic children growing in this society where they have the freedom to follow their own dreams and without intentionally breaking traditions carried by their parents. These children are going through a process of acculturation in which they are adapting to their new culture. Coming from a culture where tradition is important and now living in a place where they have the liberty to do what they want to pursue has these children fighting internally on what they should do.

 Women are the biggest benefactors and are adapting faster to the liberty they have in this new culture. They take advantage of the opportunity to go to school and achieve a career that gets them out of the lifestyle their mother went through. “Hispanic families also have been described as socializing their children according to traditional gender role values and, as a result, girls may enjoy less freedom than their male counterparts,”(lorenzo-blanco) Women are beginning to become more independent and walk away from the tradition of being inferior to men. They now want to level the playing field with men and this has helped change the Hispanic culture adapts to the culture in the U.S. With so much pressure from parents to live in the same gender roles as their mothers, many women have decided to move out on their own and pursue a higher education to benefit them. This conflicted with tradition of staying to help the family, but they know this is for their own good.

            For boys who are growing up in the American culture, there is not a big difference because in Hispanic culture they were not given a major role as daughters were. They had more liberty and no obligations since the father provided financially and women did the chores. In the process of acculturation, boys didn't have to take advantage of pursuing a higher education or a job instead they do whatever they want without any pressure other than financially income. It doesn't seem like anything has changed for men in these gender roles.

            This breaking of traditional gender roles has turned out to be a positive change for girls coming from these Hispanic families, but what are the consequences of this decision? Young women have had the bigger impact than men have based on their decision of breaking gender roles. Women have decided to go to school and now there is a higher number of women pursuing careers and receiving college degrees. “In the last decade, college enrollment among Hispanic women increased by 70 percent, compared to 56 percent among Hispanic men, said Jacqueline King, the study's author.”(Daniels) The consequence of this decision is that these young girls are now leaving their family along with traditional responsibilities. They are also postponing the idea of marriage and having their own family until after finishing their studies. Another consequence is that females who were more connected to their family still followed traditional roles, while other women who broke traditional roles were more disconnected from their family. They also had a tendency to be more depressed debating on whether to stay with their family and live a hard life or educate themselves and have a better life. These same young women were not taught how to cook or run a family and lacked motherly and wife instincts that came naturally to their mothers. Although they might have trouble cooking, they no longer need to rely on men to be supported financially and no longer have to put up with domestic violence. Women are now becoming more intelligent, independent, financially independent, and are now at a competitive level with men.

            The main role for men was to protect and financially provide for his family, but although they didn't have a big role as children, the breaking of tradition household roles has caused some trouble. One of the big concerns was that many of these boys would grow up not knowing how to work because their fathers never got the chance to show them good working ethics. But on the other hand there was the case that due to traditional roles boys would only grow up to work  like their fathers ,but looked forward to breaking these roles to go to college. The other problem was that now men now were going to marry women with less knowledge on cooking, nurturing children and with more focus on their own goals or jobs. The consequences of the men's decision are not as impactful as the ones from women’s decision of breaking down old traditional roles.

             I think that this traditional role was going to eventually going to be torn down, but in over all this is for the better of society. Women and men should both be equally responsible for finances, actual maintaining the household, and raising their children. It will create some family problems with traditional parents, but I truly believe it is in the best concerns of society to accept new modern ideas.