Changing Family Identity Through the Quinceañera Ritual

Abstract

Prior research has examined the quinceañera’s role in Hispanic female adolescents’ identity development processes, but few have examined the quinceañera as a site of group-level continuity and change whose relevance persists in a post–Great Recession economy. This gap in the family science literature reflects a larger epistemic shortcoming stemming from the field’s use of White mainstream family processes as the reference from which to operationalize normative family values, attitudes, and behaviors. Using historical and demographic data in tandem with contemporary literature on the consumptive behaviors of Hispanic families, we conceptualize the quinceañera as a consistently symbolic, yet flexibly enacted ritual performed by diverse U.S. Hispanic families as they co-construct family identity against the backdrop of changing immigration patterns, fertility rates, and financial practices.

Keywords

Hispanic families Quinceañera symbolic interactionism fertility rates financial practices

The Hispanic quinceañera, much like a bat mitzvah or a wedding, represents a ritual linking family members in context and time that reaffirms a family’s cultural identity and economic agency (Beck, 2007; Cantú, 1999). Viewed as a process rather than a product or a fixed event, the quinceañera has evolved in response to changing demographics, immigration, and economic conditions and the demands they place on Hispanic families living in the United States. Against the backdrop of an increasingly toxic public discourse on immigrant families, Hispanics who perform the quinceañera ritual construct and enact complex roles as part of normative family identity development. The meanings ascribed to a quinceañera’s consumptive activities in the manner of financial investments and resource commitments by multiple family members promote group strength and resilience (Danes, Alba Meraz, & Landers, 2016; Epp & Price, 2008). That is, the quinceañera represents a fluid, adaptive family identity process, despite its anachronistic pageantry with ancient Aztec roots. Prior research has examined the ritual’s role in Hispanic female adolescents’ identity development processes (Davalos, 1996; González-Martin, 2016; Härkönen, 2011; Romo, Mireles-Rios, Lopez-Tello, 2014); however, few scholars have situated the quinceañera as a site of group-level continuity and change whose relevance persists in a post–Great Recession economy. Conceptualized as a family-level process, the quinceañera functions as a system of intra- and intergenerational interactions, resource decisions, and consumptive values within which multiple family members enact roles that reflect changes in group identity, fertility, and economic agency.

This gap in the family science literature reflects a larger epistemic shortcoming stemming from the field’s use of White mainstream family processes as the reference from which to operationalize normative family values, attitudes, and behaviors (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995; Pyke, 2000). Consequently, the quinceañera as a site of family identity production lacks a hermeneutical foundation (Fricker, 2007), obscuring a collective understanding of its salience in Hispanic family processes. Put another way, the quinceañera remains opaque and difficult to interpret using existing family science methodology. Because the quinceañera has no experiential equivalent in non-Hispanic White family practices, existing sources of family demographic, time use, and economic data exclude variables meant to capture the physical, social, religious, and financial activities performed by families during quinceañera preparation and performance.

Hermeneutical gaps notwithstanding, it is worthwhile to examine how the intersection of immigration, birth rates, fertility, and spending power shapes Hispanic family practices that sustain family identity. Over the course of a century, pan-Hispanic traditions that strengthen family and group identity while protecting against discontinuity-through-assimilation have emerged (Perlmann & Nevada, 2015). The quinceañera tradition typifies pan-Hispanic group membership as a common socioreligious rite-of-passage celebrating a girl’s transition to womanhood (Rodriguez, 2013). Often, the ritual is marked by a lengthy (sometimes years-long) preparation and commitment by all members of the family, including some members of the extended kin network (Alvarez, 2007; Cantú, 1999). Contrary to arguments of the diminished interest in cultural traditions by second and third generation immigrants (Rothe, Pumariega, & Sabagh, 2011), the quinceañera process represents an upward trend in community building by immigrants and children of immigrants who neither intend to return to their countries of origin nor succumb to the falsities of colorblind assimilation. Although the ritual nominally celebrates an individual female adolescent, by agreeing to participate in the ritual process, family members enact interdependent roles whose group-level meanings extend beyond the identity of young woman herself. It is a nod to the traditional space of Hispanic families’ religious customs and a celebration of their newfound consumer power in the United States that persist despite declining fertility rates and economic uncertainty following the Great Recession.

We argue that the quinceañera has been a consistent yet flexible ritual in diverse Hispanic families as they have co-constructed family identity against the backdrop of changing immigration patterns, fertility rates, and financial practices. Using historical and demographic data in tandem with contemporary literature on the consumptive behaviors of Hispanic families living in the United States, the present article uses symbolic interactionism (LaRossa & Reitzes, 2009; White, Klein, & Martin, 2015) as a theoretical framework to conceptualize the relationship between family-level identity change and the perseverance of a nominally individual ritual. We begin with a brief overview of the current dominant public narrative on Hispanic immigrant families in the United States and how it obscures the complexity of everyday activities from which group-level identity is forged. Next, we examine the role of U.S. census data in problematizing race outside a Black-White paradigm and the development of a pan-ethnic Hispanic identity in the mid-20th century followed by greater within-group diversity in recent decades. Third, we examine Hispanic women’s nonlinear fertility rates and implications for resource allocation as well as increased resource investment by extended kin. Finally, we consider the literature on Hispanic families’ income, savings, and consumptive behaviors and conceptualize that resource management decisions are reflective of the ritual’s predominance in the construction of family identity.

Theoretical Framework

Symbolic interactionism is a useful framework to better understand how individuals assign meaning to social activities, events, and symbols of family life (LaRossa & Reitzes, 2009; White et al., 2015). By constructing and enacting roles interpreted as personally meaningful, an individual’s experiences shape behaviors that, in turn, contribute to group-level processes that sustain family identity. The satisfaction derived from the activities and social interactions related to family roles has implications for group-level behavior, relationship quality, and individual well-being. For immigrant groups experiencing change and continuity as a minority subgroup, cultural norms guide interactions within the family system and between extended family and the community. Understanding the salience of performing roles in support of a valued socioreligious tradition unique to Hispanic families in the United States is central to examining the meaning ascribed to family members’ and extended kin’s behaviors that undergird group identity processes. For Hispanic families whose daily social interactions are interpreted against a changing public narrative on the belongingness and deservingness of immigrants (Patler & Gonzales, 2015), a commitment to intra-family identities influences an individual’s motivation to participate in activities that benefit the larger group (LaRossa & Reitzes, 2009).

The Public Discourse

Just two years into the Trump presidency, commercial bids for a U.S.–Mexico border wall are quietly under way, immigration protections for undocumented childhood arrivals have been rescinded, and migrant families from Mexico and Central America have been forcibly separated at the border, triggering a tsunami of public outrage over the egregious damage to children’s psychological well-being resulting from the trauma of family separation. Despite the headlines, millions of Hispanics in the United States—of variable documentation status, income levels, educational attainment, and religious affiliation—continue to engage in dyadic and group-level family activities, decisions, and exchanges as part of an adaptive existence in a country whose relationship with immigrants of color is inconsistent, at best. The public discourse surrounding undocumented families and the violence they are facing in their countries of origin obscure the reality faced by Hispanic immigrant families currently residing in the United States and actively constructing the roles they set out to enact once the decision to migrate was made. The physical, financial, and psychological risks assumed in a migratory relocation to the United States must be negotiated within the context of larger historical and economic forces that shape how meaning is ascribed to family-level processes. Thus, we examine Hispanic family identity continuity and change as embodied in the quinceañera ritual beyond the thin veneer of public outrage and politicized debate dominating the narrative on Hispanic families, beginning with a review of the historical challenges facing U.S. demographers in situating Hispanics within an ill-fitting Black-White paradigm.

The Census Problem

Understanding meanings behind Hispanic families’ processes of change requires, first, acknowledging the inconsistencies plaguing the federal government’s attempts to track an immigrant population whose racial identification does not fall neatly within a Black-White dichotomy (Perlmann & Nevada, 2015). In 1930, the U.S. Census Bureau created and then promptly removed a Mexican racial category. What followed was a 90-year classification dilemma reflected in various changes to the long and short census forms, including adding an ill-defined ethnicity category, removing questions of parent’s birthplace, comparing surnames with those collected from phone directories in Mexico to identify respondents as Hispanic, and dichotomizing the White racial category as either non-Hispanic White or, presumably, Hispanic White, without providing definitions for either choice (Perlmann & Nevada, 2015). None of these options allows the data to be mined for nuanced interpretations of differences among subgroups of Hispanics based on country of ancestor origin or degree of exposure to colonialism by older generations. Furthermore, these options assume that ancestor origin information only matters for Hispanics (compared with non-Hispanic Whites or any other race category) regardless of generational longevity in the United States.

An unintended consequence of the classification dilemma is the creation of a pan-Hispanic identity adopted by private, commercial, and public institutions as a marker of this group’s economic, cultural, social, and political presence. Of the 50.5 million self-identified Hispanics counted in the 2010 Census (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011), it is impossible to ascertain the degree to which a Hispanic person identifies with this monolithic, pan-ethnic label. What is certain is that the self-identified Hispanics account for over 50% of the population growth in the United States between 2000 and 2010 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011) and hold an estimated spending power of US$1.7 trillion in 2017 (Statista, 2018). Despite these visible trends, variability abounds in the family structure and behavioral patterns within and across Hispanic immigrant subgroups. Indeed, scholars have pointed out that immigrants are a self-selected group whose reasons for leaving their country of birth are complex (Landale & Oropesa, 2007) and reflect larger demographic changes in their countries of origin (e.g., delayed age of fertility, lower overall fertility rates) as well as economic and political marginalization within the country from which they fled. Therefore, Hispanic immigrant families reflect a breadth of structural and behavioral diversity based on their social locations within a racially and ethnically stratified sociopolitical landscape in their countries of origin.

If differences within and between immigrant subgroups and Hispanics already residing in the United States existed and were valued as symbols of ethnic pride, what purpose might a pan-ethnic family ritual serve? Once again, census data point to a historical partitioning of groups based on census labels that unified families from distinct Hispanic subcultures as a way to broaden the hermeneutical base from which their organizing practices could be understood by White majority institutions. Prior to 2001, Hispanics had not yet surpassed African Americans in population growth (Cohn, 2010). The 1980 census counted just 14.5 million Hispanics, or 6.4% of the population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006). The majority of self-identified Hispanics were of Mexican descent (12.1 million), followed by Puerto Ricans (2.5 million) and Cubans (1 million), each concentrated in geographically disparate regions. Thus, in the 1970s and 1980s, differentiation from Whites and Blacks was a stronger determinant of pan-Hispanic identity than demarcation between subgroups due to the United State’s binary racial classification system (Itzigsohn & Dore-Cabral, 2000). Catholicism and religious sacraments offered a common spiritual space in which Hispanic families could differentiate from Protestant Whites while embracing the comfortable familiarity of religious traditions alongside Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central and South American brethren. If rituals and routines helped organize family life as meaningful for members across different generations (Markson & Fiese, 2000), then the quinceañera offered Hispanic families the opportunity to engage in collective consciousness (Young, 1994) through ritual enactment. Participation in a family member’s quinceañera strengthened the individual- and family-level Hispanic identity in contrast to mainstream White or Black minority culture without the tradeoff of family separation that accompanies the ritual of marriage.

Nonlinear Fertility Rates and Investment in Extended Kin

As the Hispanic population grew from 12.5 million in 1980 to 50.5 million in 2010, the prominent Latino socioreligious ritual of the quinceañera grew in popularity (Deiter, 2002). Since the need to differentiate from Whites or Blacks has not been as great in the 21st century, the meaning ascribed to the quinceañera tradition evolved to reflect the Hispanic family’s changing minority position and subsequent expectations. Herein, we examine demographic shifts in birth and fertility rates among Hispanic women. Fertility rates among Hispanics increased in the 1990s but declined again after 2000 (Landale & Oropesa, 2007). The downward trajectory continued post–Great Recession, when the overall birth rate for Hispanic women in the United States was 72.1 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 years (Stepler & Lopez, 2016). Decreased fertility points to the variability between and within generations of Hispanic women with implications for the strengthening of family practices among Hispanic families. With fewer Hispanics giving birth, childless Hispanic women may be in a stronger financial position to provide support to younger siblings, nieces, or cousins in an effort to carry on the socioreligious quinceañera tradition. In this role, a Hispanic woman is actively co-constructing her family and subgroup’s cultural identity while fulfilling familial obligations as a madrina (sponsor), a function that is fundamental to the structural integrity of this communal performance (Cantú, 1999).

The changing nature of social interactions between smaller families and their extended kin is transforming the meanings associated with the quinceañera tradition. Beyond acculturation goals, the lower birth rate has practical implications for increasing the family’s cultural, spiritual, emotional, and financial wealth as individuals may choose to divert resources to extended family. A Hispanic woman performing the role of madrina invests in multiple forms of social and economic capital while strengthening the salience of her identity. Male family members participating as padrinos (sponsors) or chambelanes (members of the quinceañera’s court) may interpret the salience of their roles differently based on individual meanings; however, participation in role-related activities link these members to extended kin and the larger cultural subgroup in context and time.

Income, Spending, and the Booming Quinceañera Market

The quinceañera is big business in the United States. In 2007, Latinos spent US$400 million on quinceañera expenditures (Alvarez, 2007). Much like weddings, quinceañera expenses include costly gowns, catering, a ballroom rental, photographers, and a DJ or a band. EC Hispanic Media (Alvarado, 2015) estimates the average quinceañera preparation and performance cost at upward of US$15,000 per event. Financial groups have begun including the quinceañera as a savings category for financial services targeting Hispanic families (De Dios, 2013; Experian, 2012; World Council of Credit Unions, 2010). Meanwhile, corporations with global consumer appeal have acknowledged the potential forms of capital surrounding the family mythos of the quinceañera. In 2013, Disney launched a quinceañera dress line based on famous Disney princesses (Baral, 2013), and 4 years later, Mattel followed with the launch of a quinceañera Barbie (Diaz, 2017). Yet, there is a scarcity of research examining the contextual forces underlying U.S. Hispanic families’ financial resource decisions (Danes et al., 2016). In collectivist cultures, where the group is central to resource making decisions, refining the methodological tools used to understand the multiple dimensions of spending and investment behaviors required for quinceañera planning at the family level allows for a more nuanced interpretation of the meanings ascribed to the various financial activities. Limited by data collection methods used for tracking cross-national demographic and labor force characteristics of individuals and households (e.g., the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (n.d.) and the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (2018) American Time Use Survey). Hispanic family scholars must triangulate such data with alternative sources since the use of purportedly colorblind variables are of little utility when used to examine meaningful differences tied to rituals and cultural activities for families of color.

Changes in Hispanic family income have not kept pace with the increased spending in the quinceañera ritual. Median income for Hispanic households increased by only US$8,000 between 1970 and 2010 (Fisher & Hsu, 2012; Stepler & Lopez, 2016), from US$30,000 to US$38,000. Plath and Stevenson (2005) reported that even as Hispanic and White’s incomes converge, financial services consumer preferences do not, indicating that Hispanics at all income levels fell behind their White counterparts in choosing long-term investments, retirement accounts, and life-insurance holdings. Instead, Hispanics favored liquid investments with shorter life cycles. A preference for near-term investments supports the argument that as quinceañera become more popular and more expensive, Hispanic families who embrace the tradition may be placing more emphasis on the prestige of family traditions and related social interactions than on the prestige of accumulated wealth.

There is evidence to suggest that consumer behavior and spending practices facilitate construction of family identity (Epp & Price, 2008). The quinceañera is unique in that, although it is a celebration of the daughter’s transition into womanhood, every member of the immediate family constructs and enacts a role (Alvarez, 2007). Brothers are often chambelanes (male members of the quinceañera’s court). Sisters are expected be damas (female members of the court) or flower girls. Mothers must present their daughters a tiara, and fathers must gift their daughters their last doll in addition to performing a father-daughter waltz at the reception. Kin networks are expected to act as madrinas and padrinos, or sponsors of categories of the celebration such as the cake, the dress, or the Catholic mass fee. In return, each participating member is named and honored in the printed program that has become a staple of these choreographed rituals. These diverse experiences of the various family members are linked in time not just by the celebration itself, but by the hundreds of hours of preparation undertaken over the course of months or years by every member of the family and the collective meaning ascribed therein. This is what Epp and Price (2008) referred to as the unique identities performing collective rituals in the face of competing demands. But it is through the interplay of “doing” family through individual- and group-level roles that family identity is constructed in the collective consciousness of the family, independent of any individual members’ personal memory of the ritual process.

Conclusion

By examining the function of the quinceañera ritual among Hispanic families in the United States in the context of changing demographics, the present article has linked the survival of the traditional socioreligious rite of passage for a 15-year old Hispanic girl to the intersection of immigration, fertility rates, and financial practices of Hispanic families at large. Historically, families who enacted the ritual invested in the creation and performance of meaningful roles that were fundamentally salient to the co-construction of a pan-Hispanic identity borne out of the federal government’s inability to accurately classify the growing Latin American immigrant. Interlocking processes of family role-making and role-enactment emerged, cementing the group’s identity as competitive, productive, successful, and as consumptive participants in the context of an increasingly immigrant-wary public discourse. Scholars of Hispanic family development must continue to examine processes of continuity and change relevant to immigrant families of color to ensure methodological approaches evolve to reflect a shift in culture, race, and ethnicity to the center rather than at the periphery of Hispanic family research.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Azucena Verdín has an EdM in the arts in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is currently a doctoral candidate in educational psychology at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Her dissertation is titled “Mothering While Brown: Latina Immigrant Borderland Mothers’ Experiences of Epistemic Injustice.”

Jennifer Camacho is a third-year doctoral student in the educational psychology department at the University of North Texas with a concentration in human development and family sciences. Her scholarly interests are in the field of infant mental health, the racial socialization of biracial children, and parenting and adolescent mental health.

References

Alvarado

(2015, June). The quinceañera industry: A gold mine for local businesses. EC Hispanic Media. Retrieved from https://www.echispanicmedia.com/learning-the-hispanic-market/the-quinceanera-industry-a-gold-mine-for-local-businesses/

Alvarez

(2007). Once upon a quinceañera: Coming of age in the USA. New York, NY: Viking.

Baral

(2013, May 16). Disney quinceañera dresses: Disney launches line based on its most famous princesses for Latinas coming of age. Latin Times. Retrieved from https://www.latintimes.com/disney-quinceanera-dresses-disney-launches-line-based-its-most-famous-princesses-latinas-coming-age

Beck

(2007). Outcasts of Echo Park, heroes of Brentwood: Quinceañera, keeping up with the Steins and coming of age in ethnic L.A. Multicultural Perspectives, 9(2), 26-28.

Cantú

N. E.

(1999). La quinceañera: Towards an ethnographic analysis of a life-cycle ritual. Southern Folklore, 56(1), 73-80.

Cohn

(2010). Census history: Counting Hispanics. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/03/03/census-history-counting-hispanics-2/

Danes

S. M.

Alba Meraz

Landers

A. L.

(2016). Cultural meanings of resource management for Mexican-Americans. Journal of Family Economic Issues, 37, 607-623. doi:10.1007/s10834-015-9476-x

Davalos

K. M.

(1996). “La Quinceañera”: Making gender and ethnic identities. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 16, 101-127.

De Dios

. (2013). Hispanic youth: Demographics, products & promotion. Coopera Consulting. Retrieved from http://www.cooperaconsulting.com/hispanic-expertise.cfm

10.

Deiter

(2002). From church blessing to quinceañera Barbie: America as” spiritual benefactor” in La Quinceañera. Christian Scholar’s Review, 32(1), 31-48.

11.

Diaz

(2017). Mattel is trying to get into the quinceañera business with Barbie. Retrieved from https://www.experian.com/assets/simmons-research/white-papers/marketing-services-hispanic-demographic-report-11-2012.pdf?

12.

Epp

A. M.

Price

L. L.

(2008). Family identity: A framework of identity interplay in consumption practices. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(1), 50-70.

13.

Experian. (2012). The New American consumer: State of the Hispanic consumer marketplace. Retrieved from https://www.experian.com/assets/simmons-research/white-papers/marketig-services-hispanic-demographic-report-11-2012.pdf

14.

Fisher

P. J.

Hsu

(2012). Differences in household saving between non-Hispanic White and Hispanic households. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 34, 137-159. doi:10.1177/0739986311428891

15.

Fricker

(2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

16.

González-Martin

R. V.

(2016). Digitizing cultural economies: “Personalization” and U.S. quinceañera practice online. Cultural Analysis, 15(1), 57-77.

17.

Härkönen

(2011). Girls’ 15-Year birthday celebration as Cuban women’s space outside of the revolutionary state. ASA Online Journal of the Association of Social Anthropologists, 1(4), 1-31.

18.

Holstein

J. A.

Gubrium

J. F.

(1995). Deprivatization and the construction of domestic life. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57, 894-908. doi:10.2307/353410

19.

Itzigsohn

Dore-Cabral

(2000). Competing identities? Race, ethnicity and panethnicity among Dominicans in the United States. Sociological Forum, 15, 225-247. doi:10.1023/A:1007517407493

20.

Landale

N. S.

Oropesa

R. S.

(2007). Hispanic families: Stability and change. Annual Review of Sociology, 33, 381-405. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.33.040406.131655

21.

LaRossa

Reitzes

D. C.

(2009). Symbolic interactionism and family studies. In Boss

P. G.

Doherty

W. J.

LaRossa

Schumm

W. R.

Steinmetz

S. K.

(Eds.), Sourcebook of family theories and methods: A contextual approach (pp. 135-166). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

22.

Markson

Fiese

B. H.

(2000). Family rituals as a protective factor for children with asthma. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 25, 471-480. doi:10.1093/jpepsy/25.7.471

23.

Panel study of income dynamics. (n.d.). University of Michigan. Retrieved from https://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/guide/documents.aspx

24.

Patler

Gonzales

R. G.

(2015). Framing citizenship: Media coverage of anti-deportation cases led by undocumented immigrant youth organisations. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41, 1453-1474. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2015.1021587

25.

Perlmann

Nevada

(2015). Ethno-racial origin in US federal statistics: 1980-2020 (Working Paper, Levy Economics Institute, No. 857). Retrieved from https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/173466/1/wp_857.pdf

26.

Plath

D. A.

Stevenson

T. H.

(2005). Financial services consumption behavior across Hispanic American consumers. Journal of Business Research, 58, 1089-1099. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2004.03.003

27.

Pyke

(2000). “The normal American family” as an interpretive structure of family life among grown children of Korean and Vietnamese immigrants. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62, 240-255. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566701

28.

Rodriguez

E. I.

(2013). Celebrating debutantes and quinceañeras: Coming of age in American ethnic communities. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

29.

Romo

L. F.

Mireles-Rios

Lopez-Tello

(2014). Latina mothers’ and daughters’ expectations for autonomy at age 15 (la quinceañera). Journal of Adolescent Research, 29, 271-294. doi:10.1177/0743558413477199

30.

Rothe

E. M.

Pumariega

A. J.

Sabagh

(2011). Identity and acculturation in immigrant and second-generation adolescents. Adolescent Psychiatry, 1(1), 72-81.

31.

Statista. (2018). Hispanics in the U.S.: Shopping behavior. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/study/20338/hispanics-in-the-us-shopping-behavior-statista-dossier/

32.

Stepler

Lopez

(2016). U.S. Latino population growth and dispersion has slowed since onset of the Great Recession. Pew Research Center. Available from www.pewhispanic.org

33.

U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics. (2018). American time use survey 2003-2017. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/tus/

34.

U.S. Census Bureau. (2006). Hispanics in the United States. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/files/Internet_Hispanic_in_US_2006.pdf

35.

U.S. Census Bureau. (2011). Overview of race and Hispanic origin: 2010. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf

36.

White

J. M.

Klein

D. M.

Martin

T. F.

(2015). Family theories: An introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

37.

World Council of Credit Unions. (2010). Understanding Hispanic culture key to serving the community: Remittance services offer first step, WOCCU Webinar Participants Learn. Retrieved from https://www.woccu.org/newsroom/releases/Understanding_Hispanic_Culture_Key_to_Serving_the_Community

38.

Young

F. W.

(1994). Durkheim and development theory. Sociological Theory, 12, 73-82. doi:10.2307/202036