Changes in Marriage Roles Accompanying the Acculturation of the Mexican-American Wife

Abstract

The processes of acculturation, as they effect marriage roles, are examined in the Mexican-American wife population of the United States Southwest. Two groups, representing more-and lessacculturated populations, but roughly equivalent in age, are compared. A combination of area and cluster sampling techniques were employed, using home-interview methods. Item responses were analyzed for group differences. Hypotheses were generally confirmed: during acculturation, marriage roles change toward a more egalitarian-companiotnate pattern or, in Rainwater's terms, from a segregated to a joint conjugal role pattern. SOCIAL science has long assumed that the processes of acculturation operate with widespread and profound effects upon the minority ethnic group family. As the minority ethnic group in the United States faces the economic, social, and psychological challenges of an alien but dominant culture, each group finds itself forced to make adjustments in living habits which will have inevitable consequences for family relationships. An implicit assumption of investigators in this area has been that the family is a prime field of the ensuing conflicts. For instance, in Spiro's1 fundamental article, he posits that the family will be an anti-acculturative influence; in the privacy and intimacy of the home, traditional values and practices can be perpetuated, with the ramifications of these traditionalisms serving to counteract extrafamilial influences toward compliance with the dominant value system. He argues also that the stress of culture contact will be reduced by family traditionalism, presumably due to solidarity support. Nevertheless, Spiro also observes that children are the agents of culture change. Generational distance from the area of origin undoubtedly decreases tendencies toward traditionalism. It also intensifies the focus on the family as the arena of conflict between the two cultural value