Heather MacDonald's Hispanic Family Values - Essay Example

Social workers and government policies are at a great quandary on how to deal with such a problem and various solutions and proposals had been put forward but it seems to no avail. This paper is a short discussion of the so-called “Hispanic problem” and the Latinization of America. Discussion Heather MacDonald's rather lengthy article delves on the growing Hispanic class of unwed mothers living in America today. The article “Hispanic Family Values?” questions the assumptions inherent in the Spanish-American society in which being a single parent has been considered as culturally acceptable but this has serious implications for American society as a whole because the Spanish-descent population of America is the fastest-growing segment and this has a profound impact on American society today and in the foreseeable future.

To help in her arguments, MacDonald relied greatly on the appeal of logos (logical based on knowledge) rather than on the other two appeals in an argument, which are the ethos (ethical) and pathos (emotional). Along this line, she cited a lot of facts and figures derived from statistical studies. The structure of the essay is being expository by using strong and clear claims about the serious implications of a large population sub-segment that is unwed, reliant on the social welfare services and finds nothing objectionable to having unwed mothers, often very young.

There is strong evidence for her claims and it is therefore hard to argue against these claims. A large portion of her essay was devoted to citing incontrovertible evidence using statistics and a host of anecdotes and vignettes regarding actual lives of its study subjects. Any person who had read this article would come out fairly convinced of her point of view regarding the social crisis facing Hispanic society in America today based on warrants that are essentially valid. A lot of supposedly “Hispanic family values” had instead worked against this immigrant section of the population like having a tight-knit family conducive to raising a kid without a father.

A case in point is the citation regarding how fast the Spanish-American population is growing compared to other ethnic groups in America. A high birth rate (female fertility) that is coupled with an accepting and tolerant culture towards having illegitimate children had been a great contributory factor to the main social problem. The author cited these alarming statistics to show the extent of the problem: “The rate of childbirth for Mexican teenagers, who come as from by far the largest and fastest-growing immigrant population, greatly outstrips every other group.

The Mexican teen birthrate is 93 births per every 1,000 girls, compared with 27 births for every 1,000 white girls, 17 births for every 1,000 Asian girls, and 65 births for every 1,000 black girls. To put these numbers into international perspective, Japan’s teen birthrate is 3.9, Italy’s is 6.9, and France’s is 10. Even though the outsize U.S. teen birthrate is dropping, it continues to inflict unnecessary costs on the country. . .” and although the author maybe did not want to sound alarmist, the dimensions of the problem boggles the mind.

Many of Spanish grandmothers are single and never wed, so their daughters never got married