Who is Latino Dad?

by Roberto Santiago, An Interdisciplinary Life

OK, I don’t want to give away the ending, but I’ll admit that this doesn’t have the answer. Not in a direct way. How much we can answer that question depends on how you frame it. In that way, it is much like the Latino community itself. In as much as we share certain cultural and ethnic histories, we are deeply heterogeneous. We belong to a demographic that was established for political expedience as much as anything else. So it follows that a question, and a people, that are subject to being framed and reframed could have many possible answers.

First, let’s look at what we know. We know that the Latino population in the United States is changing. In 2014, nearly half of the population increase in the United States was due to Latino people. According to a 2015 Joint Economic Committee report from the U.S. Congress, and reporting from the Census Bureau, the Latino population in the U.S. grew more from births in recent years than from immigration. Immigration now accounts for only around one-quarter of Latino population growth, and 64% of Latinos in the U.S. are born citizens. This stands in stark contrast to popular narratives being ‘trumpeted’ in recent years.

With a greater number of US native born Latinos comes greater assimilation, and in some ways, more significant opportunity. College enrollment among Latinos is up; however, enrollment for Latino men lags far behind that of Latinas. Income among Latinos is rising. That’s the good news. Still, Latinos lag behind other Americans in employment, earnings and education. While the numbers are trending up, Latinos are behind White and Asian Americans in these categories.

Where assimilation is evident is in family patterns. According to data published by the National Research Council, successive generations of US native born Latino-Americans are less like their parents, and more like majority American society, when it comes to family life and structure. Each generation is more likely to marry, cohabitate and bear children with non-Latino partners. American-born Latinos are more likely to than their parents to have children outside of marriage; a choice that fits with the greater social trends currently being exhibited in the United States. Yet there was also a shift towards more single parent Latino households between 1980 and 2000. This shift is somewhat mitigated by data from a 2016 study by Promundo that showed that nonresident Latino fathers (those who did not live with their children) were more involved with their children over the first two years of the child’s life than were nonresident White fathers.

Research from the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families supports the National Research Council data. In the 2017 report, A Portrait of Latino Fathers: Strengths and Challenges, the Research Center highlights the fact that, “Latino fathers have high levels of co-residence with their children, high levels of marriage and cohabitation with their female partners, and relatively low levels of multiple-partner fertility.” While the numbers are greater for foreign born Latino fathers in these categories than for American-born Latinos, the numbers are strong across the board. According to the report, 73% of Latino fathers live with all of their children, 82% are married or cohabitating with a partner, and 85% have children with only one partner.

So who is Latino Dad? Even with all the data, the picture doesn’t crystalize. The data can’t tell us the stories of the lived experience of Latinos today. What’s lost is the full picture of the modern Latino family. The one that holds on to tradition, but also embraces current views on what constitutes a family. The numbers say that we are increasingly unmarried, raising kids in single parent homes. But the numbers can’t tell us who we are. The data says we are more likely than previous generations to be in mixed race relationships. We are less likely than our ancestors to live with our ancestors. Yet we are far more likely than our White peers to live in multi-generational households. We are everything we were in previous generations, but in increasingly smaller proportions. We are more like our dominant US-culture counterparts than ever before, yet still facing an achievement and opportunity gap. Still, none of this answers the question, who is Latino Dad?

I am a Latino dad. I am half Puerto Rican and almost half Japanese, with little Euro-mutt thrown in. My Spanish is terrible, cobbled together from first period high school classes and an adolescence spent working in restaurants and on construction sites. I am a Christian, but not a Catholic, having found religion as an adult. I might be seen as an outlier due to my educational achievement. But I’ve also faced discrimination, being told more than once that I’d never go to college, among other slights. I’m a writer, a teacher, an interpreter, and a father. I am married to a White partner. I am raising mixed race, multicultural children, which is old hat for me as the mixed race kid of a mixed race kid. I am working to instill a Latino identity in three kids who could easily assimilate, if not for that pesky last name, because the only trace of their Afro-Caribbean heritage is in their beautifully full lips. I am a Latino Dad, but I am not the answer to the question, “Who is Latino Dad?”

As you’ve likely surmised, there is no single answer. Latino Dads are a second generation Mexican American vlogger and his Parisian wife raising trilingual children. They’re a fashion blogger in Houston, and “The most famous single dad on YouTube.” These men and others are being brought together to bring the stories of Latino Dads to the forefront. With the help (as always) of our Latina sisters, we aspire to create a community for Latino Dads of all types. A place where we can empower Latino Dads to openly demonstrate the curiosity and humor of involved parenting while fostering an environment of honesty, integrity, and respect for both traditional and nontraditional families. We have soft launched a platform where we craft the narrative and bring the true story of Latino Dads to life for each other, as well as for a broader audience. We are at a crucial time for fathers, and for Latinos in the United States.

Who is Latino Dad? We are the ones posing the question, and seeking to bring you the answers.