@Smokin Joe
I KNOW I am going to get flamed for this,but watch me pretend to care.
IMNSHO,one of the biggest things holding his and her Panics back is Catholicism. They just flat have too many children. Children they can't afford to have and care for,and then have enough left over to keep the children out of the job market so they can go to schools and learn trades that will raise their economic status.
Not what we are seeing here.
Yes, some of the families are large, but family is a core value in that culture, just as it was in the more agrarian South of my youth, where farms grew labor intensive cash crops.
Some things are just more important than a Park Avenue Penthouse.
As for learning trades, we've been surrounded by roofing crews because of a hailstorm in June that dumped 3" hail on town. The nail guns sound like a firefight.
Very few on those crews speak English as a first language. I heard one guy say he was reluctant to hire whites (who can readily get an oilfield job if they can pee clean) because all he had seen were meth heads who might show up for work, and the Mexicans were far more reliable. If I could have had a do-over on who did my sheetrocking after the fire years ago, I'd have hired the Mexican guys, not because his bid was lower, but because his work was better.
At least in this area they have made serious inroads into the trades, and it is only a matter of time in this Right to Work State, before they are in the unions as well. As far as moving into individually licensed trades, like plumber and electrician, that's coming too. With a large family backing you, you can get that schooling done. They key is working together.
But here is the thing: If you want people who show up on time, work hard all day, do it how you want it done, and can pass a drug test, those are the crews. Why?
Because the family keeps the pressure on to perform. Don't make Papi look bad. The Church backs up that family tradition. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to be successful, and not everyone has the same idea what constitutes success.
In the end, that large family works
for them, not against, if they work together, and while the first generation may not have a new Caddy in the driveway and kids in IV League schools, t will happen if they want it to, in a generation or two, if they stick to their cultural mores. At least here, these are hard working folks. It is why they are more likely to vote for the most conservative candidate here, because they aren't welfare bums. If they want fewer children, even in Roman Catholicism there are approved methods of preventing conception. If there weren't, then all Roman Catholic families would be huge, and that just isn't happening.
What is holding people back is that they have gone cartwheeling off into the weeds chasing trinkets, gotten selfish, and forgotten the importance of family. Not the kids, so much as the parents, and when the parents forget, that culture gets broken. How can kids learn the importance of family from parents who don't teach it? A culture of 'every man for himself' isn't a culture, it's a free-for-all.
The Church
can be a stabilizing factor in that culture. Which is not to say there aren't bad clerics out there, so, for an individual parish, YMMV, especially now, with this Communist Pope, infiltration by pedophiles, and other subversions. The Church is in its own cultural war.