Full Citation

Title: Changing Household Structure Patterns in the Mexican Origin Population: Life Course, Family Survival Strategy, and Culture Incorporation Determinants

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 1997

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Abstract: In the United States, the nuclear family is and has historically been the normative living arrangement (Ruggles, 1987). There has been a long term trend toward fewer and fewer extended family households as well. However, as this research documents, recent rates of extended family living vary across racial and ethnic groups and by nativity, with immigrants experiencing higher rates than their U.S. born counterparts. Combining the study of the cultural and socioeconomic determinants of household structure with the study of immigrant incorporation in the United States, this dissertation examines the extent to which the greater prevalence of extended family households among immigrants is more attributable to cultural patterns, presumably rooted in the immigrant's countries of origin, or to lower immigrant socioeconomic status that often persists despite increasing exposure to the receiving society. The dissertation focuses primarily on the Mexican origin population in the United States. Overall, the results indicate that extended family households are more likely to be adopted at later points in the life course and when individuals are in or near poverty. Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants who have been in the United States for longer periods of time are most likely to follow this life course pattern and to most frequently utilize the vertically extended family household containing relatives from several generations. Recent immigrants, on the other hand, tend to rely more frequently upon the horizontally extended family household composed of younger adults from a similar point in the life course. In addition, such households are increasingly formed among immigrants of higher socioeconomic standing. A comparison with household formation patterns in Mexico indicates that the general trajectory of household structure observed across the life course for Mexican Americans and longer resident immigrants is similar. Therefore, it does not appear that immigrants are bringing a cultural preference for extended family living with them when they arrive in the United States. Rather, the migration process itself disrupts the normative life course pattern of extended family living found in the United States and in Mexico and appears to encourages coresidence upon arrival in the United States regardless of the life course position of the migrants.

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Authors: Glick, Jennifer Elyse

Institution: University of Texas at Austin

Department: Sociology

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Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher Location: Austin, TX

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity

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