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This dissertation examines adolescent partnering norms, goals, and behaviors in rural Mexico, and how goals for marriage and romantic relationships exist in tandem with goals in other domains. I focus on the choices adolescents make about the way they spend their time, as those choices are important for later trajectories. I examine how adolescents weigh different goals and envision their transitions to adulthood within a context of traditional gender roles, educational expansion, and a culture of migration. My dissertation integrates quantitative and qualitative data from the Family Migration and Early Life Outcomes (FAMELO) project on parents’ views on their children’s sexuality and relationships (Chapter 2), adolescents’ own aspirations for marriage (Chapter 3), and adolescents’ romantic relationships (Chapter 4). I first examine how parents talk about the appropriate ways to parent their children, focusing on time use, romantic relationships, and morality. I draw data from four focus groups with parents and adult leaders (n=40) collected in rural Mexican communities. I find that parents rely on cultural schemas and collective narratives to justify their specific parenting practices. Cultural schemas employed by the parents in this study include the ideas that young people must be “distracted” through other activities – primarily education – to avoid immorality or poor decisions; young men and women jump into serious relationships too quickly; and that women are gatekeepers of morality. For each of these prominent cultural schemas, parents shared collective narratives as concrete evidence for the validity of these beliefs and as justifications to police boys’ and girls’ autonomy, often through gendered ways.I then use survey data to examine how adolescents (n=1,567) think about the importance of and appropriate age for marriage. Do adolescents think about marriage and serious unions the way that their parents perceive them to? While few factors are associated with the importance of marriage – most adolescents consider marriage to be important or very important – several factors are associated with the desired timing of marriage. Adolescents with lofty goals in other domains that appear to be in conflict with family formation, including education, are more likely to want to get married when they are older. The majority of the adolescents in the sample want to get married in their mid-to-late twenties. These findings stand in stark contrast to parent perceptions that adolescents simultaneously jump into serious unions far too young and that they do not value marriage. However, these findings are consistent with parents’ beliefs that education keeps their children out of trouble. I close by analyzing adolescent romantic relationships – likely precursors to serious relationships and marriage-oriented partnerships in adulthood. I identify different relationship types for adolescents and determine which factors are associated with adolescents being in each specific relationship type. I use data on romantic relationships (n=653) reported by adolescents who were between 14 and 17 years old at the time of the survey. I employ latent class analysis to reveal the most prevalent types of relationships that adolescents in the sample have. The four types of relationships in the sample are: serious, marriage-oriented relationships; casual, short-term relationships; long-term relationships that are not focused on marriage; and public-facing, moderately serious relationships. I then examine how adolescent aspirations are associated with being in each type of relationship. I find that higher educational aspirations and desires to migrate are significantly associated with a greater likelihood of being in less permanent relationships. Taken together, these three empirical studies enhance our understanding of parent and adolescent aspirations, perceived conflicts between aspirations and decisions in multiple life domains, and how both aspirations and decisions are linked across the individual life course. |
