A new idea of motherhood is developing out of the growing number of immigrant women who leave their home children in Mexico while they seek work (both legally and often illegally) in the United States.
In many Mexican families, the woman is often a key provider of household income. Based on job availability, many Mexican women have decided to immigrate to the U.S. to work and send money home to their family.
This creates a “hybrid" approach to motherhood that reflects neither the United States’ nor Mexican ideals of motherhood. The priorities and meanings of motherhood are shaped to fit the physical separation created by their choice to provide economic security for their children back home. This migration brings a new idea of motherhood that centers around capitalism and the new transnational cultural identity.
U.S. middle-class mothers are often economically secure enough to afford hired help to raise kids, and therefore aren’t always present during the child’s early years. In places like Mexico, they believe in round-the-clock mothering, and sharing mothering responsibilities with grandmothers or female friends. The new motherhood transcends both national ideas, as well as gender barriers, and is based upon the moving of financial support from the mother back to her children to show her love and commitment to her family.
Most of the transnational mothers work as nannies or housecleaners to wealthy white women, and end up mothering her children. Performing these domestic duties for others is hard because it forces the immigrant mothers to break deeply gendered boundaries of family and work that is part of their Mexican culture. They often transfer affection onto the white kids, or resent the mothers for not being there to care for them herself. Of course these feelings call into question the validity of the immigrant women’s choice to leave her kids behind as well, and the migrant mothers must work to defend their choice, even to themselves.
The idea of “breadwinning” or fulfilling the families needs has always been largely defined as men’s work in Mexico, so transnational mothers are also embarking on a “gender-transforming odyssey.” Traditionally it would be the men who would travel to the united states for work, but now husbands are being left behind. There is also a growing number of single-parent female heads of house, forcing them to be both a mother and a breadwinner. This brings them guilt and stigma for breaking gender traditions, and a constant fear that their children back home will not love them anymore.
Transnational motherhood disrupts the engrained cultural notions of family. In living this lifestyle, they must pioneer a new idea of motherhood in a global arena, where many elements are working against them.
