Fathering latina sexualities: Mexican men and the virginity of their daughters

Mexican men have been traditionally misrepresented in or omitted from fatherhood scholarship, sexuality and reproductive health-related research, and immigration studies. Based on in-depth tape-recorded interviews with 20 immigrant men living in Los Angeles, this study examined Mexican fathers' views of virginity as they educate their daughters in the United States. Results indicate that fathers' perceptions of a daughter's virginity are shaped by regional expressions of patriarchy and masculinity, and the socioeconomic segregation of inner-city barrios. Protecting their daughters from a sexually dangerous society and improving their socioeconomic future is of greater concern to these men than preserving virginity per se. These men's narratives challenge stereotypical images and archetypes of the Latino macho father. Key Words: Latinas, Mexican fathers, migration, sex education, virginity. A dominant perspective in the literature on Mexican families and fatherhood has projected an inaccurate characterization of men and masculinity. Mexican fathers are frequently portrayed as rigid and authoritative macho men controlling their families (e.g., Barkley & Salazar-Mosher, 1995; Lewis, 1961; Madsen, 1964; Penalosa, 1968). For instance, being jealous and possessive of "their women" has been identified as a cultural trait of Mexican men in some publications. On one hand, ethnographic research with fathers from the United States (Secunda, 1992), Europe (Sharpe, 1994), and South America (Olavarria, 2001) has similarly reported some men's feelings of possessiveness and difficulty in acknowledging their children-daughters in particular-as sexualized individuals. On the other hand, family and adolescence studies have challenged monolithic and static ideas of fathers of Mexican origin living in both Mexico and the United States (Bronstein, 1984; Cromwell & Ruiz, 1979; Falicov, 1982; Mirande, 1991). Mexican men and fathers also have been excluded from the traditionally woman-centered models of reproductive health-related research in Mexico (Figueroa Perea, 1999) and the United States. Sexuality and reproductive health research with populations of Mexican origin began to examine youth sexuality after the mid1980s. And in the last decade, the parent-child relationship has received special attention with regard to sex education, information, and knowledge (Baird, 1993), the first sexual experience (Upchurch, Aneshensel, Mudgal, & Sucoff McNeely, 2001), the absence of sexual activity (Liebowitz, Calderon Castellano, & Cuellar, 1999), and pregnancy out of wedlock (Erickson, 1994). However, these studies focus more frequently on the maternal figure (e.g., Villarruel, 1998), including large-scale quantitative research on Latino adolescents' sexual behavior (e.g., Hovell et al., 1994). Immigration research with families of Mexican origin also has ignored fatherhood, focusing instead on how and why migration and settlement may restructure gender relations (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994), motherhood (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, 1997), young couples' redefinitions of marital quality and sexuality across borders and between generations (Hirsch, 2003), and the sex lives of both homosexual (Cantu, 1999) and heterosexual Mexican immigrants (Gonzalez-Lopez, 2000, 2003). Culturally defined traits such as familismo, personalismo, machismo, marianismo, the madonna/whore dichotomy, and Catholic religion have long been the dominant theoretical categories that researchers have used in the extensive scholarship on Latino family values and beliefs, and Latina/o sexuality and gender studies across disciplines. Using ethnographic data from in-depth interviews with 20 Mexican immigrant fathers, this article proposes a bridge between fatherhood, gender and sexuality, and immigration studies in order to examine Mexican fathers' views of sexuality as they educate their daughters with regard to virginity in the United States. …