coordination of role expectations facilitated survival on the frontier. Each person behaviorally and institutionally carried out those roles that would ensure family survival. The female child learned the roles and skills of wife and mother early, because she would carry them both out in the absence of the mother and as a future wife and mother. The eldest female child was expected to oversee the younger children so that the mother could carry out her task and in the upkeep of the family. The oldest male, after passing through puberty, had authority over the younger children as well as his older female siblings. This because he would take on the responsibility for the family in the absence of his father and for his own family as a future father.The oldest family members, after they physically could no longer work, assumed the role of assuring family continuity. They were the religion teachers, family historians, nurturer of small children and transmitter and guardians of accumulated wisdom. This wisdom and many years of labor for the family was repaid by the respect given for their years.Therefore, although particular role expectations are based on gender and age, and these dictate relationships and interactions, these roles were originally developed in response to a means for family maintenance and survival.FAMILISTIC ORIENTATIONThe Mexican American family form was a result of a style that was brought from Mexico, modified in the United States, and adapted to fit a pattern of survival in the isolated, rural areas of the Southwest. Because of this history, there is an assumption that the Mexican family and the Mexican American family are isomorphic, allowing one to evaluate the Mexican American family from knowledge of the Mexican family, which is, in fact, misleading. However the importance of the family unit continues as a major characteristic among Mexican Americans to this day.The family orientation continues because the fa...
