Students, faculty and community members packed themselves tightly into a wee classroom in Landrum Academic Hall on Sept. 29 to watch Dr. Jessica Lott, assistant professor of anthropology, present about her ethnographic field work studying Latino communities.

The event was hosted by the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Philosophy in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from Sept. 15 until Oct. 15.

Lott’s research centers on family values and reproductive decision-making in contemporary middle-class marriages. Specifically, she explores how the increasingly common decision to abstain from having children — a deviation from a traditional cultural value — positions them in their social circles.

In a sit-down with The Northerner, Lott spoke about the importance of learning about other cultures, especially at an institution with limited ethnic diversity. According to the Office of Institutional Research, in the 2022-2023 academic year, Hispanic students made up 667 of 15,827 enrolled students, or 4.2%. White students made up 76.7% of the student population.

“It’s important to say we have a space here and this is a group of people that isn’t ‘other,’” said Lott. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to say, ‘yeah, this group is part of our local NKU community and our larger American community.’”

While speaking with The Northerner, Lott recalled a few of her most memorable experiences and findings in her field research with Latino communities in the Dallas, Texas area.

Women make the choices…

Family is a centerpiece in many Latino cultures, and for women, having children is a convention that perpetuates cultural gender roles and virtuous nurturing qualities. The middle-class women in Lott’s study, however, found themselves negotiating whether having children while following career ambitions was right for them, she said.

The idea of having children tended not to be something discussed before getting married, said Lott. But women who knew they didn’t want children seemed to feel a sense of duty to disclose to their partner that they wanted to stay child-free prior to making the commitment of marriage.

“The only people that were really having those conversations were women who were like, ‘I don’t want to have kids, so I need to have my partner know that going in,’” said Lott.

Husbands tended to respect their wives’ bodily autonomy and support their preference of whether or not to reproduce, said Lott.

“Across the board, pretty much everyone said the woman gets to decide because it’s her body and she’s the one who’s gonna have to deal with most of it,” said the professor.

…and the sacrifices

Women in the study who chose to not have children encountered an internal battle over whether to fulfill traditional family gender roles or devote themselves to their career, a modern American ideal, said Lott.

“Women are experiencing a role conflict between what it means to be a mother and a family member and having a middle-class identity. Whereas for men, having that job and bringing in things is also part of that fatherhood identity,” said the professor.

When it comes to career flexibility for parents, a man might change his shift at work while a mother might transition into a career that’s more compatible with motherhood, explained Lott. “I think men, emotionally, were very invested in being fathers, but I think they overstated a little bit compared to women the kinds of things they were doing,” she said.

Couples that had children were also more likely to live near extended family to assist in child-care duties, added Lott.

A sensitive subject

Lott learned fairly quickly that the decision to not have children was kept silent when possible. When it was broached in discussion with family members, couples tended to be dismissive or vague about their plans.

“It was just one of those choices where people let it linger,” said Lott.

It was common for child-free couples to say that they planned to ditch their birth control and see what happened, or if confronted by an older family member, to say it’s “in God’s hands.”

It was upon discovering this cultural discomfit surrounding not having children that Lott found she would be unable to interview the couples’ parents for her research, because doing so would mean outing some subjects’ secrets, she said.

A welcoming bunch

Lott was delighted by how kind her research subjects were. She attended community networking groups and workshops regularly to find people to speak with and meet potential subjects.

It was common for people to invite her to their home for dinner or offer to buy her meals if they met at a cafe.

“I’d be like, ‘I’ll buy your lunch as a thank you for your interview,’ but because I was a grad student, people kept trying to buy me food,” explained Lott, who would politely decline their offers and insist on buying.

“It’s always a really touching and really wonderful experience. It’s a little sappy but it’s true,” said Lott.