Date of Award

2026-05-01

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Educational Leadership and Administration

Advisor(s)

Jesus Cisneros

Abstract

Fatherhood and minority are words that are not discussed enough in academia. While there has been an awakening in women enrolling and graduating in higher education, the same cannot be said about males, especially fathers of Mexican-American background. As the fastest-growing minority, Mexican-American fathers in doctoral studies are the most underrepresented. The current state of research in the field is minimal, focusing on Mexican-Americans in undergraduate courses, mothers in graduate courses, and males in graduate courses; little is found on Mexican-American fathers in doctoral studies. The research in this qualitative study was designed to address the limited knowledge about Mexican-American fathers in doctoral studies. In this study, I used Narrative Inquiry and inductive thematic narrative analysis to document the experiences of five participants as they shared stories of their struggles, strategies, and successes from their individual doctoral journeys. The data I collected and analyzed were viewed collectively through the theoretical framework of the Socio-Ecological Model (SEM), in which participants shaped their identities in accordance with their perspectives on their journeys. What was shared among all five participants was a sense of exhaustion, guilt, and self-sacrifice at the micro level. The mesolevel was the relationships they held with their spouses, children, and some extended family members as they redistributed parenting roles and familial obligations. The macrolevel was the University of Texas at El Paso, with student colleagues, professors, as well as cultural and societal norms they had to contend with. The Exolevel was external influences beyond their control, such as tuition, work demands in their professional careers, and life-changing experiences. This method was preferred because it afforded the participants' perspective, not only as the product of their environment, but also as the environment being the product of them. That is, how they saw struggles and overcame them.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

120 p.

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Harat Ridrigo Saucedo

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