she insisted.”92
Married mothers may orchestrate their migration because of the negative effects their husband’s migration has had on their marriage.93 When husbands leave, women like Yolanda, who cultivated the family’s peanut and bean crops on her own, may work harder performing both unpaid and paid labor.94 Gabriela explained that when her husband is away, “When I lie down at night, I am exhausted. What is most tiring is having the responsibility for the children. It is much better when he [Angelo] is back visiting, because he takes over looking after the children. . . . I feel like it is a load off my back when he is here.” The wives of migrants do find some benefits related to their husbands’ absences. “At times,” explained one woman in San Ángel, “there is a lot of freedom, because when he is here you cannot do anything. But if he isn’t here, you can go out and come back whenever you want.” However, their activities while husbands are away are closely monitored by their families and neighbors. Conflict with in-laws is common.95 Accusations of women’s infidelities while husbands are away are widespread.96
Aside from an increase in work and the intensified relationships with in-laws, the separation of wives and husbands during migration enhances the dependency of wives on their husbands, which may prompt women’s migration to the United States. When a woman’s husband migrates, she is disconnected from his daily life; she does not prepare his lunches, wash his work clothes, or relax with him after a long day, as she may do when living with him in Mexico. Her only link to her husband’s work is via the money sent home. In Mexico, the wives of migrants anxiously await phone calls or other news of their husbands. Gossip about men’s infidelities in the United States is common.97 At a distance, phone communication becomes even more crucial to sustaining what would otherwise become a purely economic relationship. Yet because of the high cost of making international phone calls from many places in Mexico (eighty cents per minute where I lived in Oaxaca, as compared to the ten cents per minute for the same phone call from the United States), migrant husbands almost always initiate contact.98 Physically divorced from their spouse’s everyday activities and economically dependent on them, these women are less able to influence their husbands. For some, the separation means greater freedom of activity in Mexico. For others, it results in feelings of passivity. For married mothers, migration is not only a way to make money; it is a way to regain control over their family life.
Single Mothers
Single mothers who migrate to the United States do not experience the uncomfortable dependency on migrant husbands before leaving home. Their trouble with men came prior to migration. Yet, like married mothers, single women also migrate out of a combination of economic and personal motivations. In most cases, the economic situation of single mothers is more acute than that of married mothers. When marriages end, it is very difficult for women to provide for their children. One mother could not make ends meet after her husband left her for another woman. Her siblings in New Jersey offered to help and sent her the money for the border crossing. Zelia had to move in with her parents after she left her alcoholic husband, who “liked to go around with other women.” Although she was able to work part time in town and had enough to eat, she lamented: “It is difficult because there isn’t any work. The children ask for things, and we don’t have anything to give them.” Zelia’s siblings helped her come to New Jersey. Migration places these single mothers in the position of family breadwinners.
Single mothers also find that migration gives them the opportunity to reinvent themselves. Young unwed mothers in particular feel they have few opportunities to get married in Mexico. In many Mexican rural towns, brides are quite young. In San Ángel, one nineteen-year-old daughter of a migrant mother told me that all her friends were already married with children. “I feel like I should already be married.” Another nineteen-year-old woman, who had been married at age seventeen to a twenty-six-year-old man who had previously been in the United States, explained why she felt glad to be married to a migrant. “At my age, no one would even look at me. They all want young girls.” The preference for young brides leaves single mothers out in the cold. Not only are they described as masisa, or overripe fruit, but since they are no longer virgins and have already been “eaten,” they are no longer marriage material.99 A twenty-year-old single mother I met in Mexico hoped to migrate within the year and eventually remarry. In Mexico, she explained, “They [men] don’t think of you as a real thing; they see you as easy. And if they want me and love me, it has to be the whole package.” In New Jersey, only one single mother I interviewed lived alone; the other seven, as well as the three mothers who divorced their husbands after migrating, lived with boyfriends. Migration offers single mothers a chance to start over.100
Mothers Leaving Children
As married and single mothers come to the United States expecting economic and lifestyle changes, they are typically more open to the idea of bringing their children to the United States than are fathers. Yet mothers feel they cannot do so immediately. For one, knowing they are migrating primarily to work, they worry about child care. One mother, for example, explained why she left her children: “Well, you also have to have a place to put them.” Some married mothers are determined to take their children with them, until family members dissuade them. Ofelia said her mother reminded her that she did not know where she would live or who would be able to take care of her two-year-old son. Migration with children adds greater uncertainty not only about child care but also about health care and the educational system, particularly for the undocumented. Migrant parents are aware that U.S. immigration policy has become increasingly strict and punitive since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.101 Mothers believe they will be more prepared to bring their children into a new and potentially hostile environment once they have learned to navigate life abroad.
Mothers also worry greatly about the undocumented crossing.102 One said, “I wouldn’t risk taking them via the mountain.” Crossing the U.S.-Mexican border without papers is considered to be more dangerous for women than for men.103 When women’s physical safety is entrusted to paid smugglers, the risk of rape, either by smugglers or by other men crossing with them, is omnipresent. The crossing is, however, even more dangerous and expensive for children.104 Young children may be confined to small spaces, or even given medicines to make them sleep, in order to facilitate the crossing.105 Risks for children at the border include experiencing human rights abuses, getting lost, sustaining injury or death, and being caught by officials.106 Indeed, border enforcement policies have made the crossing even riskier for minor children, with the number of children returned to Mexico by border officials skyrocketing over the past few years.107 As one mother summarized: “I didn’t know what the crossing would be like. For me, I knew I could do it, but not for them.”
Aside from the difficulties related to the border crossing and child care, technological advances may make Mexican mothers more willing to leave their children for a temporary period. The immediacy of communication means that mothers know they will be able to wire money via services like Western Union in response to minor crises, such as children’s illnesses.108 In addition, despite practical difficulties, most migrants can arrive home by air after a day of travel, and some do when their parents or children become seriously ill. New technologies foster migrant parents’ ability to respond to family emergencies even from abroad. Satellite technology also makes communication possible for families living in even the remotest spots (without phone lines) through cellular phones.109 Knowing that they can talk to their children over the phone at any time may make mothers more willing to endure a temporary separation, whether by reuniting with a spouse already abroad or, for single mothers, by becoming the primary family breadwinner.110
Migrant mothers and fathers who leave their children in Mexico are not acting impulsively out of desperation. They are proactive. They weigh the economic opportunities available in the United States, as well as the personal benefits they may gain from migration, with the costs of bringing children with them. But mothers and fathers arrive at the decision to leave their children in different
