More Than Hair Color: Embracing the Complexity of Latino Identity -

I have been a mama for seven years.

For the past seven years, I have been walking around town with blond babies in tow. Strangers and fellow observers around town have asked me the most clever and interesting questions about the blond babies in tow.

“Are you the nanny?”

“Did you adopt them?”

“Are you their step mom?”

I always smile and happily let them know the shocking news that my tan skin body indeed carry for ten long months each baby that they are seeing in tow.

Soon, the extraordinaire question engages two random strangers to a two minute discussion about the fascinating world of genetics and if I whether or not eat pickles in my pregnancies. (I guess eating pickles will make you have blond babies?)

Seven years of walking around town with babies in tow have prepared me for all kind of remarks except for this one:

“Did you dye your kids hair?!” a funny lady asked yesterday in Target.

I laughed and since I was in a hurry, I only replied: “yes, how did you tell?”

But her question lingered with me. It made me pause, because it wasn’t just about my children’s hair color—it was about identity. It’s about how we see and interpret family, culture, and even race.

As a Latina mother, my children’s appearance often sparks questions, and many of these questions reflect an underlying curiosity or confusion about our identities. These inquiries, though sometimes lighthearted, reveal how society tends to associate physical traits with ethnicity and family dynamics. We often find ourselves as parents explaining or defending what is so deeply rooted in our cultural, racial, and familial identities.

When I think about my kids and their blond hair, I can’t help but smile at how their appearance, in some ways, highlights the beauty of mixed identities. I, too, carry parts of different cultures in me—my Ecuadorian roots, my immigrant journey, and my experience raising bilingual, bicultural children. Our identities aren’t always neatly boxed in by skin color or hair texture. They are complex, evolving, and shaped by heritage, love, and the paths we choose to walk.

So, the next time someone asks if I dyed my kids’ hair, I might just smile a little wider. Because in that question, I see the curiosity about something deeper—the beautiful complexity of Latino identity that refuses to fit neatly into any single box. And that, I believe, is something worth embracing.