This investigation sought the perceptions of a selected group of Mexican-American community leaders in Tucson, Arizona, concerning their recollected classroom relationships with their teachers. The investigation proceeded on the basis of a three-part theoretical framework drawn from the literature of psychology, anthropology, and education. The theory included the following: (1) Perceptual Processes; (2) Cultural Processes; and (3) Interpersonal Processes. An interview schedule, based on the elements of the theoretical framework, was developed employing a Likert type scale together with an open-ended comment format. Twenty Mexican-American community leaders were identified and interviewed in depth regarding the perceived relationships that they recalled having had with their respective teachers. Among the findings, the following appeared to be most significant: (1) the participants generally agreed that their teachers were aware of them; (2) the participants reported perceiving that their teachers had accepted them; (3) the participants agreed that their teachers had generally not accepted most aspects of their bicultural being. They reported perceiving that their teachers' thrust appeared to have been toward assimilation; (4) the participants reported that their teachers seemed not to have cared sufficiently to communicate to them that their bicultural identities were important; (5) the participants reported that their teachers had not encouraged them to make choices in becoming independent persons. They tended to report that their teachers had lowered expectations for them and therefore had not adequately challenged them; and (6) the participants perceived that their teachers had not extended themselves to positively support their cultural identities.

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Because pronatalist sentiments may be an important aspect of Mexican-American ethnic heritage, this research focuses on cultural as well as socioeconomic factors which may contribute to higher Mexican-American fertility. Language use and nativity are used as indirect indicators of identification with an ethnic culture. Wives' characteristics are generally considered adequate to the study of couples' fertility, but in light of earlier research by the author indicating the importance of cultural factors to the fertility expectations of Mexican-American adolescent males, characteristics of husbands as well as wives are included in this analysis. For this reason, the sample, which is drawn from the 1980 Census data for Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, is limited to Mexican-American and Anglo women who have been married only once and live with their husbands. Two complementary methods of analysis are used. Linear regression describes the significance of husband's and wife's language use, nativity, and socioeconomic characteristics to mean family size. Parity progression ratios are used to study the contribution of these variables to the likelihood of the addition of one more child at each stage of the family building process. While wife's characteristics are sufficient to account for most of the variation observed in Anglo fertility, husband's socioeconomic characteristics significantly contribute to variation observed in the fertility of Mexican-American couples. Husbands' identification with Mexican-American culture may be somewhat more important to couples' fertility than that of their wives. This is consistent with research which suggests that children are more central to male sex role expectations as they are expressed in the context of Mexican-American culture than in that of Anglos. The measures of ethnic identity used in this study are clearly associated with socioeconomic status. The differential fertility of Anglos and Mexican Americans could be attributed to these differences. The association of Spanish language use and fertility has been linked to the lower opportunity costs represented by additional children to women who do not speak English proficiently. However, the analysis of these data, which compares structural and cultural explanations of fertility differentials, provides evidence of cultural effects as well as the effects of socioeconomic status on fertility.