The purpose of the study is to address, from the feminist anthropology, the participation of children in the subsistence economy of rural marshes in three generations. It is proposed to assume that social practices, based on the sexual division of labour that contribute to the reproduction of rural marshes, change faster than collective subjectivity on the generic allocation of traditional roles. With the help of the ethnography and stories of some life stories, the changes in the activities of girls and boys are analysed in response to the adjustments required by the agricultural crash, the processes of incorporating globalisation and the new constraints of Mexican social policy. Despite these changes in the daily life of the mazahua, it is concluded that certain identity features persist on gender roles, in which girls are associated with reproductive activities: “the house”, and children with productions: ‘la milpa’.