cultural attitudes: living at home until marriage

Living at home until marriage. According to the Pew Hispanic Research Center Between Two Worlds report, living at home until marriage is a traditional habit that is causing generational rifts in American Hispanic families. Family conflicts arise when female students are offered the chance to go away for college.

For Hispanic high school girls, this pressure not to leave home until they’re married contributes to a self-censoring “opting-out” of the choice of college. And once college is not an option, the often-unengaging world of high school seems irrelevant to their lives.

But change is coming. The UCLA Higher Education Research Institute found that Hispanic students are gradually attending colleges more than 50 miles from home. While 66 percent of white students have attended “away” colleges since 1975, Hispanic students studying away from home have increased from 46 % in 1975 to almost 60 % today.

The Pew research shows that 88 % of Spanish-language-dominant Hispanics youth and 72% of Hispanics older-than-26 agreed with the statement: “It is better for children to live in their parents’ home until they get married,” whereas less than half (45%) of third generation native-born Hispanics agreed.