Latinx Dreams : Middle-Class Parents and the Promise of Mobility

Latinx Dreams turns attention to Latinx parents who are new to the middle class—a group that has received little attention in past research on social class and parenting. How do newly middle-class Latinx parents engage in class-making through their parenting? What do they prioritize in their socialization of their children and why? And what parenting practices do they use to accomplish their goals? This book tells the story of the parenting strategies Latinxs engage in to negotiate upward mobility and how they think and feel about their approaches to raising their children.

Based on in-depth interviews with middle class Latinx parents who grew up poor and working-class, Lorena Garcia shows how ethnoracial dynamics at the intersection of class, im/migration, and gender inform the lessons they teach their children about mobility, racialization, speaking Spanish, and developing skills for educational and future success. By accounting for the experiences of newly middle-class Latinx parents, this book offers further insight into class reproduction and mobility, and fills a gap in our understanding of how Latinxs who have grown up in the United States experience and navigate socioeconomic mobility.