Being born to the family of immigrants of the Latin American origin, I was expected to become a successful citizen of the USA. However, my parents did not dream of a great success of mine. What they did expect was a stable job, which was likely to be low-paid one, but the stability was important for my future than the level of income itself. The most daring dream of my future was taking a low middle-class status.
When I was a teenager I faced a problem of a wide gap between my native culture and the American traditional culture. The problem was that my family promoted tradition Catholic values and principles, which did not always meet democratic and liberal values and principles of the American culture, which was and still is predominantly protestant. As a result, we had more distinct gender roles and males and females were supposed to perform their particular gender roles. So, we preserved the view on a man as a breadwinner and a woman as a mother and wife. Hence, I need to develop different models of behavior to be accepted by my peers and share their values, while in my community and family I had to stick to our traditional values.
At my teenage years I tended to share values of my peers and I attempted to be more liberal and democratic in my views, rejecting some Catholic dogmas, which I considered to be out-of-date.
As a young adult, I had fewer educational and job opportunities than I would have now, because of the poor basic education, for I finished a public school and I was not expected to get higher education, while, today, I believe I would have better opportunities in this regard.
My parents and siblings played probably the most important role in the formation of my identity.