Pedro Espinosa said he’s ashamed. He was sitting next to the mother of his two daughters as she ate french fries on her lunch break. Marlena Ortiz, 20, works as a pharmacy cashier and is the family breadwinner because Espinosa, 21, was fired from his construction job without warning two days ago.

He didn’t take his eyes off his cell phone. All morning, he had searched for busboy jobs downtown, but found no employers looking for help. It’s a familiar routine: At the beginning of the year, he was jobless for six months. They’re too embarrassed to talk about these financial problems with friends, Ortiz said.

“I feel happy because I’m the head of the family,” she said. “But, at the same time, it doesn’t feel good.”

Throughout the city, more men have lost jobs than women in the past recessionary year, according to the city comptroller’s office. The disparity has been especially consequential in the Latino community, where men often work in construction and retailing; many won’t consider service jobs, community leaders said. In those families, wives and girlfriends often become the providers — sometimes an uncomfortable role reversal.

Mirna Cruz, 34, from Puebla, Mexico, started working when her husband lost his job this year. “There’s a lot of tension now between me and my husband,” she said in Spanish. “I tell him to look for work, but he won’t accept anything that pays less than $20 an hour. That’s just unrealistic in this economy.”

Pedro Prado Ocegueda, pastor of Primera Iglesia Bautista in East Harlem, has noticed such struggles. “In this neighborhood, we have many workers from the countryside,” he explained. “They used to be cowboys. For them to start washing dishes or selling shaved ice on the street — it would weigh heavily on their self-esteem. But when they sit at home, they don’t feel manly either. They become violent in the house and dependent on alcohol. They start a never-ending cycle.”

Their machismo also means that fathers suddenly at home deny that their wives are supporting the family. “In the U.S., it’s easy for the man to watch his wife to go off to work,” Ocegueda said. “There are movies with high-power lawyer moms. But in the Latino environment, it’s not that common.”

In the New York metropolitan area, the number of unemployed men nearly doubled between the first quarters of 2008 and 2009, while the number of unemployed women grew by less than a quarter, the comptroller’s office reported.

Latino men have a harder time than women finding work, said Diana Ortiz, a job developer at Exodus Transitional Communities, where she helps former inmates find work. Among employers, “there’s more of a comfort level with women than with men,” she found. When she explains that she’s trying to find work for a man, “their tone changes.” Further, her clients are “looking for labor-intense maintenance jobs. They’re looking for jobs where there aren’t many.”

New York State has lost about 23,500 construction and 52,500 retail jobs since July 2008, but has gained 9,700 service jobs in that period, according to the state department of labor. While Latino men snub service jobs, Latinas have more work options.

“The Latina wants a better life for her children, so she does whatever it takes to make that happen,” said Lily Valenzuela, 55, a childcare worker in Washington Heights. “She’ll sell food on the street or work in a factory if she has to. But the man wants to protect his status. He can’t be seen sweating in a street cart.”

Grandmothers and girlfriends sometimes head their households. Juana Maria Galindo, 49, lives with her two daughters and two grandchildren and supports them all by selling raspados, $1 flavored ices, from a cart at 110th Street and Lexington. Her daughters, 19 and 21, are studying for their GED exams.

“I have to work and look for Pampers even if I can’t afford them so that the grandchildren don’t get deported back to their father,” Galindo said in Spanish. “I give up hope when I can’t pay the telephone and light bills on time. Before I could pay it all on time, but now I can’t.”

That’s partly because Galindo’s boyfriend, Juan Gomez, 56, lost his construction job in January. When employed, Gomez used to give Galindo $200 to 300 a week. Now he brings “bags of ice instead of food.”

Some husbands have lowered their standards to help support their families. Silvestre Casares, 21, found work sweeping at a Lexington Avenue deli a week ago, after being laid off from his construction job four months earlier.

“There are so many men, too many,” he said in Spanish, “and no jobs. Construction: No. Markets: No. Flower Shops: No.”

His wife, Concepción, works as a waitress. She lost a job, too, but found another in two weeks. “Women can get work quickly as waitresses,” her husband said. “They don’t accept the men. I looked. Maybe as busboys, but they don’t want us as waiters.”

The long job hunt made him feel “desperate, horrible. We didn’t have money, and we had to think about food, car, rent. And there was nothing we could do.”

Uptown children say they have noticed the tension between their parents. Adriana Garcia, 17, learned that her dad lost his job when she overheard him talking to her mother, and saying he didn’t want his two daughters to find out. Adriana, who grew up in Mexico City, decided to start looking for jobs in “clothes, restaurants —anything.”

“It’s kind of sad and it makes us worry,” she said. “My dad is out of the house looking for jobs. And in my country, we don’t let the mother work. I would be uncomfortable if she wasn’t in the house and was outside working.”