The family structure for immigrants

Hey everybody it's me again here to tell you what I have been learning in class this week. What I want to talk about is the family Dynamic. Specifically, I am going to talk about the change in the family Dynamics when A Mexican family moves to America. I read a study called “The Costs of getting Ahead: Mexican family system changes after Immigration” by Martica L. Bacallao and Paul R. Smokowski. The Costs of Getting Ahead, from Smith, et al.pdf  here’s the link if you want to read. Now in here they don’t have a large group of participants, so this is not to make 100% or highly likely what is every Mexican immigrant(s) will turn out. we just want to look at the family structure that changed in these families. One of the things that I found shocking was when I was reading and there was when a woman named Diovelina (a mother) that said that she came to America not for herself but for her children to have better opportunity. For a lot of participants that told the researchers that many of the parents said that they immigrated from Mexico so that their children will have a better opportunity. Now that we know the reason for why Mexicans move to the states. Now we heard from the participants in this study on how they made the move. Usually, the family didn’t immigrate all together. One parent would go (usually the father) to lay the groundwork so that the rest of the family could come to the states. Now when you take a family system where the mom and dad would be able to help with the family matters. Take one of those members out and there is a vacuum of responsibility. This causes stress in the family system. By the way a family system is where two people (the parents) make decisions and are the leaders of the family. And when that happens the family structure must change to function with this new change. The children that had a father Go to the states well they said that it changed their relationship with their father. They said that because dad wasn’t home that the mom would then have to step up in the family. As such the children would have a stronger relationship with mom rather than dad. Now most families thought it would take around 6 months of the father gone to the states to gather enough funds for the trip for the family. Now the reality is that it took much longer than 6 months for the entire family to make the trip. Sometimes it would take 6 years now imagine to yourself you grow up without a parent there then when you finally reunite. The father tries to enforce rules or tell children to do things. I think you can imagine that there would be a natural rift in the family since the they have gotten used to a new family structure. Now in the study many families said that they missed having extended families close by. Many of the families would express that it was hard adjustment for them. Surprisingly many adolescents said that they missed extended family as much or if not more than parents. One female adolescent (Elena) said that even if she was making money in the states that she would rather have family then more money. And for Adolescents it’s a tough adjustment for them to go to somewhere new and then go to school (especially if they didn’t come legally) and make friends. Especially considering that maybe they haven’t learned English. Not only that but not knowing English will make the father finding work harder (especially if he didn’t come legally). There isn’t many opportunities of jobs and the few jobs that he could get into probably aren’t getting paid a lot. Not only that but we talked in class how scary it is (especially for women) to be smuggled illegally to the states. The smuggling is usually done by drug cartels, and they deal with human trafficking. And apparently women that do make it across the border get raped. Now I would like to end with saying that it is shocking to realize that immigrants sacrifice a lot to be here. I would say that this shed a new light about those who come to America legally and illegally. Hope you guys find this educating as I did.