Machismo, noun: A strong or exaggerated sense of masculinity stressing attributes such as physical courage, virility, domination of women, and aggressiveness.

I became familiar with the term during my two year stay in Mexico City, my Mexican friends would explain a variety of behavior by blaming it on machismo. This included parents who wouldn't let their college age daughters out after 8pm, yet let their sons stay out all night as long as they stopped by to say hello in the morning. Girls would congregate on the soccer field sidelines to cheer on their boyfriends, but rarely enter the game or play a game of their own. The only people my American friends and I could find to play soccer or basketball with were either guys or girls who didn't have boyfriends. My absolute favorite act of machismo (please note the sarcasm) was the undeterred and unashamed catcall or whistle. Any time this happened, I would think to myself, stupid machismo, women aren't objects, I hate machismo. This is not to say that machismo is only present in Mexico or even in Latin America, but this is where I became familiar with the term.

I've found that while working with many Spanish-speaking, primarily Mexican families, I've been operating under the assumption that most of my clients' fathers have machismo tendencies. Perhaps this is due to the fact that so few of them make it to my office, which often leaves my assumptions (false as they may be) uncontested. To date, I have met 5 fathers of the 60+ clients I have had since October. I met the fifth one earlier this afternoon.

I usually work with the client and his two siblings, their mom comes in at the beginning of the session to let me know how the week went and what things they did well. Today she told me that their father, her husband, would be coming in to talk with me later in the session. I had an immediate sense of trepidation, was he going to confront me for something I discussed with the client? I felt like I was in trouble because she said "he needs to talk to you", I immediately started thinking of ways to resolve the anticipated conflict.

After I worked with the client and his siblings, I had their mom and dad come in. My fears soon vanished when their dad sat down and said, "I really care about my kids. Soon they're going to be teenagers and I don't want them to resent me and run away because we have a bad relationship. I can be, well, I can get really angry sometimes and I say things that I don't mean, I yell at them and can't seem to control myself when I yell. I think I need help with my anger problem because it affects them. What can I do to be less angry?" My jaw about fell to the floor and all the preconceived machismo notions I had about this man disappeared. There has only been one other time that a parent has admitted he/she might need to change, instead of just expecting the child to "behave".