This article, Life as a Maid's Daughter by Mary Romero, takes the reader through the life of a girl named Teresa. She lived a unique life, because she was able to see the differences in the ways different races and social classes of people live in America. Teresa and her mother Carmen are lower-class Mexican-Americans, and the people Carmen serves as a maid are upper-middle-class white Americans. Over the course of her life, Teresa learns about different aspects of herself (e.g., race, class, gender, and family) through interactions with her biological family and her employer families. Teresa learned about her race around the age of three through interactions with her family and her mother's employer's family. He soon discovered that his language, Spanish, was considered inferior to that of his employer, English. Living with her mother's upper-middle-class white employer meant Teresa had to follow their rules, which meant conforming to their culture and leaving hers behind. You can see this when he played with white children; they tried to teach Teresa to speak English because they lived in a monolingual culture and refused to assimilate to her, but she resented this and also rejected the assimilation by refusing to call pescado a fish. He loved his Hispanic culture so he refused to conform by creating two cultures in which he lived; one in which he acted as his employers desired and the other in which he participated in his own culture and valued his own race. This can be seen in the way he follows the rules in his employer's homes, then quickly retreats to his Mexican heritage while with his family. There was never a clear moment when I began to learn about my race. I grew up in New Hamps…middle of the paper…we develop and also have the opportunity to move up or down the social status rankings based on how much our parents did or did not support us in raising us. Because Teresa enjoyed such a great support system from both of her families, she was able to move up in social class and redefine her set of morals, values, and norms. The social institution of family is the most important aspect to an individual's success, as can be seen through Teresa's life. Works Cited Jackson, A.P., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2000). Single mothers in low-wage jobs: Financial hardship, parenting, preschool child outcomes LLLLLLLand. Child Development, 71(5), 1409.Kourvetaris, A. G. (2009). Perspectives on ethnicity, gender, and race and their empirical referents: A quadrilateral paradigm and critical review. International Review of Sociology, 19(1), 127-146. doi:10.1080/03906700802613988