Valdez (1996) observed in her study of Mexican immigrant families in the Southwest that husbands were providers and wives were responsible for the welfare and education of the children. Bhandari, Mullen, and Calderon (2005) found that parents who belong to minority groups, were from the lowest economic strata, and were immigrants, particularly those with limited English language skills, were often perceived by educators as being less involved in their children’s education, despite the fact that they held educational aspirations for their children that paralleled the aspirations reported by other parents.
These studies do not discuss how immigrant mothers (or fathers, for that matter) actively seek ways to participate in children’s education in their country of origin and how that contrasts with the results they achieve when interacting with teachers in the receiving society. In fact, I found that Mexican migrant mothers in New York participate more frequently in school-related decisions in Mexico than in the United States.
While educación is a goal migrant mothers have for their children, it is in the process of decisions and actions related to schooling that those aspirations get translated. Throughout my fieldwork I found that mothers and caregivers associate the concept of “a good mother” with the idea of “providing an education” and of children who are educados, or well-mannered. The cultural model of educación in Latin America encompasses not only academic achievement, but also behavior of children and youth. Prins (2011) calls this behavior “social competence.” Educación goes beyond the formal walls of schools as it involves child-rearing at home, within families, and in communities.
Thus, education or educación (or the Brazilian version of educação) has a double meaning that covers school achievement as well as manners and respect (Bartlett, 2007). In this research mothers were adamant about being able to keep their children and youth in formal schooling. For them, if children and youth stayed in school and performed well, they found their migration decision to be somewhat worth the sacrifice. Even though most children and youth in this study were attending public schools, field trips, and after-school activities, and receiving books and materials for school, that was all possible only because of parental remittances. Mothers described school as a place where children could also learn about discipline and ethics. Thus, even though report cards and good grades were the ultimate indicator of success, mothers expected their children and youth to be well mannered, knowledgeable, and respectful young people.
When I inquired what “providing an education” meant, mothers overwhelmingly emphasized the importance of providing financial support for schools or school fees as well as money to buy books, uniforms, and food at school. Results from surveys with 225 children in schools in Puebla showed that 90percent of children received some sort of remittance from a family member in the United States. The children that received remittances in the form of physical gifts from their migrant mothers listed them as: backpacks, pencils, pens, notebooks, English language books, pencil cases, and undershirts to be worn with uniforms during school days.
Mothers also described a good mother as one who provides emotional support, is available to help with homework at home, makes sure children learn, makes sure children are polite and respectful, and makes sure teachers treat the children right. Women explained that the role of a “typical mother” is compromised when there is lengthy separation with no possibility of reunification. They work with caregivers in order to find ways to be present in education and school-related decisions. The goals of educación with regard to comportment or behavior and the goals of educación with regard to schooling were in tension. Mothers leave to get resources for schooling but must abdicate being the one to provide children with the daily discipline that addresses the comportment part.
Mothers interviewed often contrasted the role of the mother with the role of the father. As one mother named Camila explained,
You have to understand the following: the man is the “head” of the family … ok … you understand? Now, the woman is the neck, the arms, the body, the everything. And the fact that I am not physically there with my nenas (little girls) does not mean I am not important to them, you understand? I am still the one that puts them through school the same way as I put the ones here through school. In my heart there is space for each one of my children. I love them all equally.
Caregivers in Mexico are frequently themselves mothers. When their daughters migrate, they also play an important role in deciding on school and education issues. However, caregivers do not actively attempt to “take over” and “claim” children as their own, with rare exceptions like Aruna. As explained by Tami, a grandmother and caregiver,
My daughter gave birth to Pilar. I raise Pilar as one of my own, but she is my daughter’s daughter, she [Pilar’s mother] is the one that has to make the decisions about everything.… God didn’t make me to take over as Pilar’s mother … when my daughter returns, it is her right to take Pilar with her. I try to do what I’m told and Pilar must respect her mother’s wishes.
Grandmothers and caregivers aid mothers in New York in their attempts to establish legitimacy as a transnational parent. They do so by reminding children and youth on a daily basis about the “hardships” their mothers had gone through and still go through in order “to provide” for them. It is not just within kinship circles that the role of the biological mother or “la que dió a luz” (the one who gave birth) is linked to decision-making in children’s lives. The teachers interviewed in Mexico also described the role of biological mothers as central to children’s academic performance, attributing to them the responsibility of success or failure. In contrast, teachers in New York City complained that sometimes migrant mothers who worked too many jobs and did not speak fluent English could not assist their children “properly” at home and thus had “little understanding” of teachers’ notes, school activities, opportunities for after-school activities, and report card notations. Teachers on both sides of the border held biological mothers responsible for children and youth’s actions (educación) and performance in school.
Through the story of this constellation, Brianna, a mother in New York City, not only acted as the authority in an important decision regarding her daughter’s schooling, but also used the available limited resources she had to push for what she believed to be the best outcome for her daughter. Their story illustrated the importance of looking at the interactions across borders in order to understand who is making decisions and the roles of each member in these constellations. Parent-teacher conferences were yet another example where decisions crossed borders.
Parallel Experiences: Parent-Teacher Conferences
SOUTH BRONX, NEW YORK CITY. The day had come for Violeta to go to parent-teacher conferences for three of her four US-born children in the South Bronx, New York City. A few days earlier, Violeta had asked me to accompany her to the meetings since, as she explained to me, she had a difficult time communicating with the teachers in English. Violeta told me she did not understand when they spoke in English, because they talked too fast and it made her nervous to stop them and ask them to repeat themselves. She also described her reticence about her eight-year-old daughter Leah’s second grade teacher. “She is a black woman … she hates Latinos and doesn’t speak Spanish. You will see how awful she is, that whore. I get pissed off with that hija de puta (son of a bitch).” While acknowledging the racism in these comments, it is important to explain that much of Violeta’s anger was influenced by her view of the context of her home in the South Bronx. In her building alone, there had been a number of incidents of Latino men and women getting into physical fights with African American men and women. Like other mothers interviewed in the South Bronx, Violeta expressed concern, fear, and insecurity when describing her relationships with her children’s teachers and school staff. Her fear and anger stemmed from feeling uncomfortable speaking in English and also feeling uncomfortable with her undocumented legal status. Still, Violeta, like all mothers interviewed, understood and de
scribed her duty as a mother to “take care” of school-related things. Nancy, another mother in the South Bronx, explained, “It comes down to you, the mamá, to register children in school, get the paper work, transfer them, complain, get their uniforms, sign their homework … check every child’s notebook; and tell me if there is ONE father that has ever signed those.”
It was a cold morning in March when I met Violeta at her apartment. She lived in a two-bedroom apartment in the South Bronx with her husband Silas and her four children: Ramiro (age 10), Leah (age 8), Nicole (age 5), and Kimberly (age 3). They had been living in that apartment for two weeks when I met them; the management company moved them from their previous residence for health and safety reasons.2 While they were in their previous apartment, the police knocked on Violeta’s door almost every day looking for different people involved in selling and using crack cocaine and heroin. In that one-bedroom apartment, the children slept in the bedroom and Silas, Violeta, and her brother Samuel slept in the living room. In the old building, her children developed allergies and severe coughs due to the constant smoke in the building. Even though their new apartment was only a few blocks from the old one, it was an improvement. The two-bedroom apartment gave the family more room and allowed more space for the children to play inside. Their new building was located in front of a park that had a baseball field, benches, and a small playground; however, the children were not allowed to go there often because members of gangs “hung out” there and caused problems from time to time. Often, Dominican and Puerto Rican gangs would fight African American groups in the neighborhood, and vice-versa.
The children’s school was a 20-minute walk from their home. Silas dropped off the kids at the school every morning, but he never spoke to any of the teachers, did not know their names, and was not interested in participating in school activities. Violeta worked four times a week and was the one in charge of helping the kids with homework, as well as securing food stamps, child support, health insurance, and any school-related activity.
These activities included the dreaded parent-teacher conferences.
VISITACIÓN, MEXICO. Back home in Mexico, Tatiana took care of Andrés (age 14), Violeta and Silas’s first born. Tatiana is Violeta’s mother and Andrés’s grandmother. Parent-teacher conferences for Tatiana in Mexico were also difficult. Tatiana never went to school herself and her four kids, including Violeta, had all migrated North when they were teenagers. Tatiana never learned how to read or write, and she had a tough time helping her grandchildren with homework and school assignments. At the time of our interview, Tatiana was 66. She was very active and rode her bicycle everywhere. She took care of three grandchildren because their mothers were in the United States. She cooked, cleaned, and dealt with teenage drama. The house where Tatiana lived with Andrés and Carmen (another grandchild) was a two-bedroom home they owned. Anair (the third grandchild) had just moved to a small house with her boyfriend. Tatiana’s home had a backyard with chickens, turkeys, and a donkey. Their house was in front of a plaza where children played and listened to live music. Lately, Tatiana confided, the whole town was getting more dangerous, as cartel members were buying property and there were an increasing number of kidnappings and murders. Although I could not find exact numbers that exceeded the national average and reflected the violence Tatiana described, other family members in the town told me different stories about where dead bodies were hiding and how they were able to detect a car that belonged to one of the cartels because it had a specific logo on the rear window.
In an interview, Tatiana described herself as feeling left behind and abandoned by all her children, including Violeta. She had very little money and depended on remittances and on her animals. She would sell a valuable animal whenever Andrés really wanted something. For a while Violeta did not send money. She could not find a job that paid well and quickly grew her family. Then Tatiana told her, “if you don’t help your son, he is not going to go to Secundaria … and I will send him to be with his other abuelita because she can pay for his school and I can’t.” Violeta immediately started sending money: $180 a month to pay for school supplies and other bills. Tatiana and Andrés shared a bedroom and Tatiana called him her mandante, meaning that she ordered him around to run errands like buying food, paying the man who brings tortillas, and feeding the animals. Tatiana described Andrés as “very smart.” His teachers complained that he finished his assignments too fast and bothered his peers in class. Andrés’s school was located ten minutes from their house. After school, Tatiana took Andrés to swimming lessons and soccer practice. Tatiana was proud of her grandson’s academic performance. She showed me his report cards and asked me, “Aren’t the grades good? That’s what he tells me, but what do I know?” His grades were good in a few subjects, but not as consistent as Tatiana imagined. Tatiana did not like to participate in teacher-parent conferences, so she was almost always absent. She said:
The teachers are nice people, they treat him right, but I don’t understand them very much … and the person feels bad … before it was difficult because I didn’t know how to help him with homework … but his cousins are older and they helped him. Even though Violeta left when she was 15, she went to school.… She almost finished high school, she was smart. Andrés needs to know that … that he has his mother’s head, he can be someone.
SOUTH BRONX, NEW YORK CITY, CONTINUED. We arrived at South Bronx Elementary School at ten in the morning. As we walked in, we were handed a ticket and an evaluation form that was required by the Department of Education in the City of New York. The lady at the entrance explained, “If you fill out this evaluation, you will get a free ice cream.” Violeta looked at me and complained, “These bastards think they can bribe us with ice cream, I am not filling these evaluations … throw them out. Garbage.”
We started by visiting Nicole’s classroom. Nicole was in first grade and her teacher was of Puerto Rican origin. She went back and forth between Spanish and English to talk about Nicole. Leah (Violeta’s older daughter) had also been a student of Mrs. Cruz, so Violeta knew her already. Mrs. Cruz started by talking about Nicole’s reading abilities. She pointed to the wall where big letters were hanging. “See the letters?” Mrs. Cruz asked. “The best students are reading at level ‘O’ but Nicole is reading on the ‘F’ level, which is very, very low, OK?” Violeta sat there in the tiny children’s chair looking at Mrs. Cruz, who continued to talk, “Nicole doesn’t speak good English and she doesn’t speak good Spanish. You need to read with her at home, practice reading with her mami, in English please! She is not putting any effort in class, it’s hard for me … you know mami, it’s hard!” Violeta kept saying “OK.” Mrs. Cruz then described an episode in class where she asked children to draw their families and name family members as in “brother,” “sister,” etc., and she said that Nicole confused the names frequently. Mrs. Cruz referred to a man that appeared in the drawing. According to her, Nicole described this man differently each time. He would be grandfather, then uncle, then brother. This man was sometimes Samuel (Violeta’s brother) and sometimes Andrés (the son/her brother in Mexico). Violeta did not like that Mrs. Cruz implied that Nicole did not know something that seemed basic and in Spanish said to the teacher that maybe Nicole was having a bad day. Violeta wanted to leave and Mrs. Cruz wanted to be done, so we all got up and exited the classroom. As we walked to the next meeting, Violeta told me: “I told you … they hate my kids and now they decided that Nicole should be in a class for English as a second language. I don’t understand … they have moved her three times.”
Next we went to Leah’s classroom and Violeta continued: “This is the bitch I told you about … She is the one that hates the Mexican people.” Mrs. Smith welcomed us into the classroom. We sat down and she pulled out Leah’s test scores. She also pulled out a model exam. Mrs. Smith said, “This is what a perfect test looks like and this is what your child’s test looks like, you see the difference? This one is good [she mimicked a thumbs-up] and this on
e is bad [she pointed to Leah’s paper, mimicking a thumbs-down] and it’s Leah’s test.” Violeta looked down the entire time we were in the classroom to avoid eye contact with the teacher. I started translating to Spanish some of the things Mrs. Smith was telling Violeta. Mrs. Smith would use basic vocabulary to point at tests and say, “this is bad” or “this is good.” The teacher also said at least four times in 20 minutes, “No more Spanish at home, otherwise she will never learn.” In the final part of the conversation, Mrs. Smith said that Leah was most likely going to fail the grade and that she had one chance left, so it was up to Violeta to study with her and make sure she learned.3 She explained that Leah was always late with homework, that she was sloppy and did not put any effort into learning. I translated as fast as I could to Violeta.
She understood what I explained to her, but I do not think Violeta was listening at that point, as she was already closing her purse and getting ready to leave the classroom. We stood up and the teacher shook my hand and said, “Thank you for translating, this is an impossible task otherwise.” There was a moment where Violeta did not know if she should shake the teacher’s hand, and the teacher also was not sure if she should put her hand out. They finally shook hands and Violeta said under her breath and in Spanish, “She is only doing this because you are here, bastards.”
In the hallway we saw other mothers waiting to be seen by the teachers. Two of them greeted Violeta and asked, “Did you talk to the devil yet?” Violeta responded, “I just left hell.” We arrived at the final stop, Mr. Okima’s classroom. He was Ramiro’s fourth grade teacher. Mr. Okima had a projector with Google translator opened on the monitor. He told me he was using this strategy all day to speak to parents who did not speak English. Violeta smiled and said under her breath “que buena gente (what good people).” Mr. Okima was different from the other teachers because he seemed concerned about Ramiro’s performance and behavior in class. Mr. Okima told me, “Listen, my parents are Japanese and don’t speak a word of English. I get it. It’s hard.” He proceeded to describe Ramiro as a “quick” and an “interested” student. However, he explained that Ramiro “gave up easily” and did not aim to be great. Mr. Okima also told Violeta that Ramiro did not show up to the after-school tutoring sessions he had arranged for Ramiro and that concerned him. Violeta was surprised, as she had no idea where Ramiro was from 2:40 p.m. to 5 p.m. if not in school. “I will kill that boy when I get home!” she told me as we walked out of class. Violeta was livid, “I work to keep these kids in school and this is what I get. Even Andrés [her son who is in Mexico] does better in school … Ramiro is lazy, the laziest boy I know.”
Motherhood across Borders Page 10