CULTURAL AND GENDERED EXPECTATIONS OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN GRANDMOTHERS IN THE U.S.

摘要

As with any other groups in the U.S, immigrant grandmothers provide care for grandchildren when their adult children are in need of assistance and public programs do not provide adequate support. This paper focuses on the theoretical framework of carework outside of the Western context. It draws on in-depth interviews with 15 immigrant non-custodial grandmothers from Latin America and the Caribbean and examines how contrasting cultural and gendered expectations between the sending and receiving countries make grandmothering challenging. Disciplining grandchildren was one of the more salient issues that was raised through almost all the interviews. Immigrant grandmothers attempt to reconcile the forms of discipline from their home countries and what they perceive as the tolerance that is pervasive in Americans childrearing practices. The issue of disciplining their grandchildren engenders some type of emotional stress that might have some deleterious effects on grandmothers’ health.