(preliminary report) Santiago Ramírez, M.D. and Ramón Parres, M.D., international journal of social psychiatry, vol. III no. 1, Summer 1957.
Paper presented at the «Workshop in Family Diagnosis» of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, New York, N.Y., March, 1956.
From the México Psychoanalytic Study Group and Associated Professors of Psychiatry of the University of México.
1956
It is very difficult to speak about the «Mexican Family» without defining its social position, economic level and its geographic distribution within the country. Family organization and its dynamic patterns differ considerably in the different groups. For example, the «Indian family» is completely different in its organization and affective qualities from the mestizo and creole families.[1]
In spite of this, there is a social class, an economic stratum and cultural level that, notwithstanding the differences previously mentioned, can be considered as a prototype. Many of the characteristics that are found in México by the foreigner as well as the traveler and the observer are given by this «prototypical family organization». In expressing this concept, we are not referring to the «middle class», for its importance in México is minimal. The socio-cultural condition of the country is colored by a poor mestizo class, numerically superior, and by another wealthy class with a predominance of creole and foreign socio-cultural patterns.
The material for this preliminary report was obtained from psychosocial research in 500 families, obtained through a sampling statistical technique from 10,000 records of the Hospital Infantil (Children’s Hospital) in México City[2]also from the Centers for Mental Hygiene, especially dedicated to the attention of urban proletarian families, where 135 families were selected by the same technique from a group of 2,000.[3] The depth understanding, psychologically speaking, comes from our observation during analytic treatment of eleven patients whom we consider as being typically Mexican.
The Mexican Family[4]is formed in 65 per cent of the cases by a biosocial unity, the father, the mother and the offspring. In 35 per cent, the family is found integrated by this biosocial unity and some relatives, who, mentioned in order of importance within the family organization, are: the relatives of the mother (the grandmother) in 65 per cent of the cases; relatives of the father in 12 per cent; and in 22 per cent are found many other persons who are not relatives of either of the parents. We consider this data of particular importance because it tells us about the incomplete and late maturation of the Mexican woman, who frequently delegates to her own mother the maternal care of her own children. The Mexican grandmother appropriates for herself the maternal qualities of the daughter. The grandmother competes with the daughter in this area, rather than competing with her feminine values in the relation with the male. Involutional depression in the grandmother often involves the mechanism of denial of this competitive hostility.
The culture and the social group over evaluate the feminine relation in its maternal aspects and devaluate the emotional and sexual living with the husband. Oddly enough, in certain regions of the country the groom elopes with the bride, provoking the natural anger and disgust of the parents of the bride. Peace comes when the first child is born. At this moment the parents of the new mother become the godparents of the child. They take over the maternal role, as though depriving the young mother of her maternity.
The type of marital union in the material of study was as follows:
Civil and religious marriage 59 per cent[5]
Civil only 10 per cent
Religious only 5 per cent
Common Law 26 per cent
In 32 per cent of the cases, the father was absent absolutely from the family nucleus; 7 per cent because of death and in 25 per cent because of abandonment of the home.
The importance of the above-mentioned data in the dynamic structure and behavior patterns of the Mexican are reflected in all his contacts and in the way he perceives his relations with the outside world. We think that the role of the father is mainly that of a buffer, one that neutralizes, asserts and amends the primitive relation of the mother with the child. The statistical data is only a faint picture of what really happens, for even though the father may be physically present, from the psychological point of view he is virtually an absent figure. In our analytic cases we have been able to detect in the processes of the doctor-patient relationship the small importance of the father figure and the constant identification of the analyst with feminine figures.
Many observers who have approached the problem without clinical and statistical bases speak of the preponderance of the male in the organization of the Mexican Family. To a superficial observer, phenomenologically, this could be the case; but in reality this preponderance is but a reactive formation against the anxiety produced by an excess of feminine identification. The well-known Mexican attitude of «machismo», «the real he-man», the guns, the sombrero and the charro outfit, is a reaction formation against the father’s lack of real importance in the family organization.
Studying the moment of abandonment by the father, and following Ackerman’s principles and procedures of Family Diagnosis, we have found that in 70 per cent of cases of abandonment this coincides with the wife’s pregnancy. The wife is lived as a mother in the marital relation and the pregnancy as the birth of a younger sibling whose significance we shall clarify later in mentioning the problems of nursing. In 20 per cent, the abandonment occurs before the child reaches his first year —that is, when the child is beginning to make his special place in the emotional organization of the family. Only in 10 per cent of the cases do the motives differ from the above mentioned, involving, for example, social and economic factors.
In the families of this study, the number of pregnancies is 5.8 children per mother, with an 0.98 of abortion per mother. The percentage of live children is almost five per family. It is frequent that these children have different fathers, all the more so as the socio-cultural level goes down. In a research done by one of us[6] in soldiers of low socio-cultural level, it was found that there were 2.3 fathers for each mother. There is a popular saying mentioned socio-economic level that says: «We might be very poor, but each of us has his own father».
The care and the contact the mother gives the child during the first year of the child’s life is particularly close and intense. The mother carries the baby with her during all her activities. Due to the lack of economic meansshe isunable to leave the child in the hands of other people. She carries the baby on her various trips to the market, church, etc. This constitutes a unity difficult to appreciate and evaluate by a foreign bystander of our living reality.
Statistically we have found in our material that 94 per cent of the mothers breast-feed their children. The feeding is done without schedule and is regulated by the demands of the baby. Every single frustration or anxiety of the child is calmed by giving of the breast. The duration of breast-feeding, according to our data, is 11.8 months. The fundamental reason for weaning is the new pregnancy of the mother (70 per cent of the cases). The weaning and birth of a younger sibling are unconsciously visualized as a single unit. The birth of the sibling conditions the almost complete rupture of the previous highly exclusive mother-child relationship. The lack of adequate economic means makes this rupture even more traumatically lived by the child. The totality of the symbiotic relationship with the mother is taken over by the new child. Because of economic pressure, the child’s diet goes from the ideal nutrition, rich in proteins, to that of carbohydrate food and the child then lives in almost complete «abandonment».
The abandonment that the mother inflicts upon the child at the moment of the birth of the next sibling, we think, is the pattern that later on will condition the abandonment of the wife by the husband at the birth of her child. Fearing unconsciously to be abandoned, he anticipates and identifies with the aggressive mother who deserted him. In the Mexican folklore, as well as in the popular songs, this identity with the mother is almost the basic theme. The man complains that he is forsaken by the woman, be she mistress or wife, even though statistics and reality prove that it is the other way around. He drinks and grieves because of this. In the genesis of homosexual behavior, we have been able to observe a reconstruction and repair of this early affective relationship. The Mexican man, as a suitor —that is, when he has his girl friend (the mother) all to himself without having to share and to lose her to the brother— is a good companion. When he becomes a father, older brother, he stops being a companion and gets ready to abandon the home and to establish a new relationship, in which he will reconstruct in a reparative way the early symbiotic relationship with the mother In the cases when the husband continues at the home, in spite of the birth of the baby, his behavior changes; he becomes distant, hostile and authoritarian not only towards the wife, but also towards the children. He strikes out and takes out on them the primitive aggression which was inflicted on him by his mother and brother.
Much of the identity of the Mexican man comes from the mother. Late he reacts against this. He boasts of great masculinity, intransigent authority and power.
As a husband he is jealous, but this has not the meaning of Oedipal jealousy. He sees in the hypothetical lover of his wife, the sibling who robbed him of the loving care of his mother and left him forsaken and lonely. The aggression with which he answers the lover or the hypothetical rival is colored by his brutal attack on his brother.
In his relationship with his wife, he is distant and distrustful. He fears the expression of feeling, fears to admit his dependence on the love object that he fears will abandon him.
The woman responds to the abandonment by the man, when her child is born, by intensifying her closeness to the newborn child. She gives to this child all the affection that she previously directed to the husband. She derives from this child her main affectional response. This pattern of behavior makes the wife lose interest in being attractive, beautiful and well groomed, to preserve the relationship with the husband. She neglects her feminine and sexual aspects and intensifies her maternal qualities. Both objectively and emotionally she neglects her husband, and his reciprocal response is greater distance in the marital relationship. This intensifies the mother-child union and fortifies the position of the father as a buffer, absent or weak.
We think that the synomic and more profound explanation of this division of the love (bipolanty) object in the Mexican stems from these roots: the prostitute is the mother without children; the wife is the mother with children; younger brothers are to blame for causing loneliness and a sense of abandonment; girl friend, fiancée, mistress and prostitute are women without children. Mother, wife and situations of responsibility imply the sharing of the love with the hated siblings.
While it is true that the woman in her position as a daughter went through the same steps as the male, it is also true that her possibility of restoring the early symbiotic relationship with the mother may be reached through an exuberant fecundity in which by each new child she restores the lost infantile contact. In our opinion this trend perpetuates the cultural institution with its peculiar characteristics which are reflected in the Mexican Family.
In other social levels we have been able to observe the transculturation of this behavior pattern, but we have not yet statistical data enough about those social levels. Our psychoanalytical observations allow us to see the gradual modification of these patterns.
In this preliminary report we cannot venture any speculations as to how these patterns affect the structuralization of the character and social psycho-pathology. These problems are the subjects of our present work.
We can mention, as basic, three dynamic tendencies:
1. Intense mother-child relationship during the first year of life, basic, integrative, substantial and probably explanatory of the majority of the positive values of our culture.
2. The dilution of the father-child relationship.
3. Traumatic rupture of the mother-child relationship at the birth of the next sibling.
[1] Indian: a native of the country without any racial crossing and frequently only in command of his own native tongue. Mestizo: born in the country from Indian and foreign parents (usually Spanish). Creole: born in the country from foreign parents (usually Spanish).
[2] We acknowledge the valuable collaboration in working out this material to (Mrs.) Raquel Berman S.W., from the Social Work Department of the Children’s Hospital.
[3] We are also grateful to Miss Hortensia Escársega, S.W., for obtaining and elaborating this material.
[4] When we speak about the Mexican Family, we are referring to the material specifically described here.
[5] Civil marriage is the only legal marriage accepted according to Mexican laws, but because of their religious backgrounds most of the couples go through the civil marriage first (that is the requisite of the law) and the religious ceremony afterwards. Yet there are cases that, although illegal, only have religious ceremony. Also, there is the Common Law marriage that is accepted as legal after five years
[6] Santiago Ramírez, S. y María Elena Rincón, «Confidential research about the social condition of 100 families of the lowest ranking soldiers of the 24th Battalion of the Mexican Army».
Santiago Ramírez 