Analyzing Family Change

Analyzing family change in three generations of my family, I found glaring distinctions between all three, but there are also some similarities that have seeped through the generations and still remain. Most of my family is still situated in very rural parts of Mexico and all three generations of my family were born and raised in Mexico for some time including my generation. Culture and Poverty have strongly influenced the family change that has occurred through the three generations, but there are also similarities in my family that coincide with U.S trends that have also led to family change. From my grandparents’ generation to my parents’ generation and finally to my own generation there has been change in the following facets of the family:
My grandparents married through the Catholic Church in 1946, but they did not benefit from the industrial prosperity that the U.S. was having in the long decade during this time: 1948-1964. The industrial prosperity of the golden age in the U.S. allowed for a gradual shift from household labor to factories for economic production (Reed, 2016). And in turn, the industrial prosperity in this period, “allowed for, the ideal family, the traditional family where the husband worked and the wife stayed home” (Reed, 2016). In my grandparents’ small Pueblo there was no industrial prosperity; my grandfather worked in the fields and tended to his crops and my grandmother tended their house and children, but she would also go out into the fields occasionally and help with the crops. There were no rigid barriers between the private and public sphere, but there were certain jobs that seemed unfit for women at the time. Although my grandparents were not able to acquire wealth during the period of prosperity the U.S was having during the long decade, they were able to achieve some form of the traditional marriage; the man as the breadwinner and the woman as the housewife, raising the children and tending the house. Their marriage was
In relations to educational opportunity, my parents had access to an elementary education that had not been available to my grandparents’ generation in this part of Mexico. The furthest education that my parents received was primary school, and they discontinued after that milestone, but because of different reasons. My father could have continued his education and pursuing an education was the norm for boys in wealthy families, but my father decided to stop because he chose to work to counteract the poverty as opposed to continue studying. Contrarily, my mother was not allowed to continue her education because her parents believed that a women’s place was in the house cooking and cleaning. It is clear to see how the hierarchy of gender had impermeable barriers for women striving for education, and this was similar to the golden age in the U.S. where boys were expected to go to school and pursue a higher education whereas women were limited by social norms. My parents married in 1989 and they continued with the traditional family dynamics as my grandparents’ generation, only that love had become more of a focus in marriage — my father as the breadwinner and my mother as a housewife who raised the children. In contrast, in the U.S. the unfinished revolution was already underway in this time period, and the ideal family was beginning to