His words infuriated me. I reacted instantaneously and clearly agitated, I replied, “I decide how to spend my time.” He had unknowingly struck a nerve – a deep wound inflicted by the tendencies of machismo[1]. It was a reflex response; the words slipped out of my mouth without pause or hesitation. He apologized and I hurriedly hung up the phone.
“I’ll let you go now so you can go be with your son,” had been his exact words. He was a romantic interest and I identified the cause of my anger almost immediately. I became a mother at nineteen. My eight-month pregnant-self waddled across the stage of my community college graduation. I had a plan. My son would be born in July and in late August, I would begin state college. And I did just that (a 19-year-old healthy body could perform such miracles). I had a whole village that supported me, and thanks to them, I eventually completed my doctoral studies. My son was nine years old when I became a doctora.
As a single, Latina mom and first-generation college student from a low-income community, the obstacles were many. There were real challenges placed before me. My body was constantly exhausted from attending school full-time, working part-time, and raising a child. My mind attempted to juggle numerous tasks simultaneously and every second of the 24-hour period was carefully planned. My workload was unimaginable but, with the help of the abuela/os and tías, achievable. The unbearable burden was not the physical labor itself but the constant criticisms and accusations dressed as innocuous questions: “¿y cómo dejas a tu hijo tantas horas? Yo no podría” and frequent, “Y tu hijo, ¿con quién lo dejas?” paired with, “pobrecito, ¿y no lo extrañas?” I wish that at that moment I would have immediately identified them as fallacious statements upheld by the violence of patriarchy. But I didn’t.
Instead, I wept. I wept in the shower – in the place where your tears merge with the shower droplets, in the place where the noise can muffle your cries, in the place where solitude accompanies you. There were times when my tears would refuse to respect this sacred place and would instead travel to my bedroom or my car. “I am not a good mom,” I told myself. I despised myself for loving school, for loving my job. I ritualistically apologized to my son quietly as he slept every night and obsessively reminded him of how much I loved him during his waking hours. In reality, I was not trying to comfort him; I was trying to soothe myself. I was atoning for my bad mothering.
Society promotes absurd and unrealistic mothering scripts that are unsustainable. A good mother cannot have hobbies, should not enjoy a night out with friends, cannot spend money on eyelash extensions, oh, and God forbid she dates. It is ironic and almost comical that single mothers are antagonized for being single but are simultaneously forbidden from dating. If you are a Latina mother, you are also expected to ser buena cocinera, maestra, enfermera, chofer, costurera, y mucho más. La madre latina is, in reality, a mythical figure that is half human, half goddess. She is one that morphs into many things and does so willingly, effortlessly and enthusiastically. If you are a Christian Latina mother, these beliefs tend to be exacerbated by erroneous and domesticated interpretations of biblical womanhood put forth by male-dominated narratives[2]. Our love for our children seems to only be acceptable when it is self-consuming. The Latina mother is idealized, but women pay a high price for this veneration. There is nothing glorious about withstanding abuse and being disempowered, but marianismo[3] appears in the Latina/o culture masked as love and admiration. Marianismo is, in reality, a toxic ideology that stems from machismo and demands that mothers sacrifice their selfhood in service of patriarchal ideals. All those who deviate in any way from these prescriptive mothering norms are immediately deemed bad mothers.
“75% of mothers with children are employed full time.”
The image of the traditional housewife whose primary and sole responsibility is to take care of the home and children while the father “brings home the bacon” seems to have been irreparably imprinted in the minds of many individuals. However, the reality is that 71% of U.S. mothers are formally employed[4] (Pew Research 2014). Sound judgement would lead one to conclude that since the majority of modern mothers do, in fact, work outside the home, gender expectations regarding tending the home have shifted. Regrettably, this is not the case. Women, particularly women of color, have long endured the “double shift,” working full-time as paid employees and spending considerably more time than men in unpaid labor in the form of childcare and housework. According to the U.S. Department of Labor (2019), men work an average of 7 hours and 54 minutes in paid work per day, while women labor a total of 7 hours and 20 minutes. The number of paid hours worked amounts to a 34-minute difference. In the household, however, women work an average of 120 minutes more than men and Latina women work more than men as compared to women of other ethnicities. These statistics reflect normal circumstances: that is, pre-COVID 19. The pandemic exacerbated these conditions, leading to what is now known as the “double double shift.”
During the coronavirus lockdown, women with full-time employment, a partner and children worked 20 hours a week more than men in domestic labor. The consequences of the unequal division of home duties are manifold and produce a domino effect that affects nearly every aspect of a woman’s life. Carrying a larger workload means less sleep, no time for a jog, or coffee with friends. Enjoying a TV show, attending a Bible study or reading daily devotionals might seem impossible. Leisure and spiritual activities promote mental wellbeing by providing a balanced life that can help reduce stress, anxiety and depression. In a poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in the midst of the pandemic, 53% of women reported feeling worried or stressed, versus 37% of men. The gender gap is even more pronounced among parents of children under the age of eighteen: 57% of mothers versus 32% of fathers reported that their mental health has deteriorated due to the pandemic.
“Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.””
Moreover, increased household obligations impact women’s economic growth. The economic disadvantage that women have historically suffered has worsened since the pandemic. In September alone, approximately 865,000 women left the U.S. workforce, compared to 200,000 men (UN Women 2020). These figures are not coincidental; they reflect the heavy burden placed upon women’s shoulders who are forced to renounce paid employment in order to devote themselves to unrewarded and underappreciated unpaid care work. Women’s monumental efforts and hard work are not only undervalued, they are overtly punished. Formally employed mothers suffer monetarily in the form of reduced wages through what is known as the “motherhood penalty.” Women of color, who are disproportionately at the bottom of the pay scale, are punished the most. Conversely, fathers are rewarded with a “fatherhood bonus.” “Fatherhood is a valued characteristic of employers, signaling perhaps greater work commitment, stability and deservingness,” explains Dr. Michelle J. Budig. Professor Budig’s research shows, “That is the opposite of how parenthood by women is interpreted by employers. The conventional story is they work less and they’re more distractible when on the job.” In short, fatherhood is seen as an asset whereas motherhood is considered a liability.
“In 40% of all households with children, women are the breadwinners.”
We analyze the statistics and they are disconcerting. We hear women’s first-hand experiences and we are disturbed. We live out these injustices in our own flesh and yet we continue to do the bidding of an oppressive system that pollutes our soul. I want to be transparent, but it pains me to write this: my most fervent accusers were not men – they were women. Machismo tactically utilizes us, women, as weapons against ourselves and each other. We become machismo’s most faithful little soldiers. We point the gun at each other and shoot relentlessly, not realizing that those bullets are ricocheting and piercing our own bodies. We surveil each other, we play the comparative game, destroy each other in hopes that machismo will honor us as la más santa – mejor que fulanita o zutanita. I, too, have internalized sexist mothering notions, not only by allowing guilt to completely consume me but also by being highly critical of other mothers. I attempted to liberate myself from the shame and guilt that suffocated me by condemning other mothers, as if obstructing their airways would help me breath. I sought liberation, not by destroying my shackles, but by placing them on someone else. This is perverse. “Being female doesn’t stop us from being sexist, we’ve had to choose early or late at 7, 14, 27, 56 to think different […] act different […] to change other women’s minds, to change our own minds, to change our feelings, ours, yours and mine […] The basis of our unity is that in the most important way we are all in the same boat, all subjected to the violent, pernicious ideas we have learned to hate, that we must all struggle against them.[5]” Sexism is the norm; it is how we are socialized. However, God did not create us to be oppressors of each other; our prosperity as God’s children is not based on how much suffering and punishment we inflict on one another. On the contrary, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26, NRSV). We must labor daily against our own social conditioning that incites us to endorse and perpetuate sexist ideals.
In order to overcome our conditioning, we (men and women) need to become aware and be intentional. We should, for example, examine the ways in which our daily expressions unconsciously sustain sexist assumptions. Mi esposa me ayuda con los niños (My wife helps me with the kids) is a phrase that I have never heard in my life. Mi esposo me ayuda con los niños (My husband helps me with the kids) is one that I hear often. The message that we transmit is that fathers “help” mothers while mothers simply fulfill their “motherly” duties. In the church, women are overrepresented in children’s ministry and vacation bible school and underrepresented as preachers and teachers. This rigid division of labor based on gender disadvantages everyone by restricting individuals from utilizing the fullness of their spiritual gifts.
Perfect mothering does not exist and “good mothers” come in many different shapes and sizes. The same can be said about fathers. Humans have an innate desire to be socially accepted but this approval should not cost us our livelihoods. One of my father’s parenting strengths was that he himself rebelled against cultural scripts that commanded him to place his two daughters in a gendered box. He refused to “play his part” and by doing so, allowed us to flourish and taught us a valuable lesson: to question and vigorously resist toxic gender scripts. About two years ago, I was in the car with my dad on our way to our favorite restaurant and I don’t recall the full context of our conversation but I vividly remember him saying something that no one had ever said to me explicitly, “Itzel, you’re a great mom.” A tear rolled down my cheek and I believed him.
About Dra. Itzel meduri soto
As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel
Footnotes
[1] The Mexican National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women (Comisión Nacional para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia Contra las Mujeres) defines machismo as, “certain behaviors and beliefs that promote, reproduce and reinforce various forms of discrimination against women. It is constructed through the polarization of gender roles and stereotypes that [strictly] define masculinity and femininity. Its main characteristic is the degradation of the feminine; its major form of expression, violence in any of its types and forms against women” (2016).
[2] In Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified and Marginalized Women of the Bible, Sandra Glahn states, “In addition to maligning some Bible women, we have marginalized others wrongly downplaying or even ignoring their contributions” (15).
[3] “In many Latin American or Hispanic cultures, an idealized traditional feminine gender role characterized by submissiveness, selflessness, chastity, hyperfemininity, and acceptance of machismo in males” (APA Dictionary of Psychology).
[4] I use “formally employed” as opposed to “working mothers” because the latter term erroneously implies that mothers who take care of the home are not, in fact, “working.”
[5] Rosario Morales, We’re All in the Same Boat (1981).