Dutiful Hijas

  I found the ideas presented in "Dutiful Hijas" by Erica Gonzalez Martinez very interesting because these are ideas I know personally from my own culture. Martinez spoke about her burden to her family, one that was predetermined by her culture long before she was born. the idea of taking care of one's mother comes from a older tradition were the youngest daughter was deprived of many privileges and force to cared for her parents until death. Even if this was not completely the cased for Martinez, it was still a huge burden to carried. There was a sense of guilt force upon her that controlled certain decisions in her life. If she did anything her parents didn't approved of, she would be consider a bad daughter by her whole family and that would really hurt her personally. The author mother would depend on her even for the most trivial task, the author felt like the mother instead of the child. After her parents divorce, Martinez mother didn't only depend on her emotionally but economically as well. The dependency along with the guilt were the factors that maintained the author under such cultural tradition. Even though she was trying to help her mother become independent, she felt bad of the thought of not being there for her. What was interesting of this tradition was that it only apply to females, males had nothing to worry about. The parents didn't expect much from the males and they were free to do whatever they wanted. I grew up in a culture were they was a greater number of expectations from the females compare to the males, so i know what is like. The way a female was supposed to conduct herself and behaved was totally different from what was expected of a male. This tradition is actually globally, everywhere around the world we are able to see a sort of difference of what is expected based on gender. I think its a form of disadvantages. we are all humans beings, why are there different privileges base on genders?