|
Jennifer and Fernando Villa enjoy a walk Tuesday with two of their three children at Bucklin Park in El Centro. (JULIO MORALES PHOTO / January 9, 2013) |
With his third child scheduled to be born Tuesday evening, Alex Sariñana said it will likely be his and his wife’s last.
Prior to starting a family together, the pair had agreed to have children at a relatively young age. By doing so, he said, they would remain young enough to enjoy an active life together when the last of the brood went off to college.
Aside from their ages, they had also taken expenses into consideration.
“I can’t imagine trying to support six to seven kids,” the 27-year-old Imperial resident said.
Despite the fact that both his parents come from large Mexican families, Sariñana is more in line with current trends that show Latinos are having significantly smaller-sized families.
While the nation’s overall birthrate fell 8 percent between 2007 and 2010, both foreign- and U.S.-born Hispanic women had greater birthrate declines during that time, the Pew Research Center recently reported.
Of particular significance was the 23 percent drop that corresponded with Mexican immigrant women.
Demographers and sociologists alike suggest economics, along with education and the availability and use of contraceptives, may be driving down the birthrates for Hispanics in the U.S.
Maria Leon said she has seen how Latinas’ attitudes about child rearing have changed over the years. With the growing need for households to be sustained by at least two incomes, families can no longer afford to have one parent devoted to remaining at home to raise a family, much less the traditionally large Mexican family of a generation ago.
“Economic reasons have influenced Latinos’ family size,” the El Centro grandmother said.
Here in the U.S., where many children of immigrants pursue a higher education, the time spent in the classroom or workplace also places limits on family size.
“They’re not having so many kids like … animals,” she said in Spanish, as she struggled to find an appropriate analogy to convey the difference between the child bearing tendencies more commonly found among Mexican couples of her generation and their modern contemporaries.
The mother of four also clearly remembers her own mother, who gave birth to eight children, stating that she would have preferred not to have had such a large family.
Here in the U.S., Mexican immigrant women accounted for 37 percent of births in 2010 to foreign-born women. Among U.S.-born Hispanics, the birthrate fell 21 percent from 1990 to 2010, the Pew Research Center reported. The birthrates for Hispanics reached their lowest level in 20 years, the report stated.
Latinas also tend to have higher unintended rates of pregnancy than their white peers, according to the National Institute Latina of Reproductive Health.
For their part, Jennifer Villa said her and her husband gave a lot of thought to starting a family and reached an agreement on the size and the timing.
Although she said she would’ve liked a large family, the 27-year-old said having three children is plenty.
“It’s a lot of work,” she said, “and they’re not cheap.”
She herself is one of four siblings. Her father came from a family of eight. Her husband’s parents also came from families that nearly numbered a dozen or so siblings, she said.
Rosalio Sariñana also comes from a family of eight, while his wife comes from a family of 12.
The San Antonio resident, who was in town to witness his grandchild’s birth Tuesday, got married at 19 years old. They had a child about a year afterward, noting that he and his wife were “eager” to start a family.
Together they raised four children, although that number could have climbed higher. Had their fourth child not been Alex, their only son, Rosalio said he would have wanted to keep conceiving until a son was born.
His wife didn’t particularly like what she heard.
“If you want more,” Rosalio Sariñana quoted his wife as then saying, “you can have them yourself.”
Staff Writer, Copy Editor Julio Morales can be reached at 760-337-3415 or at jmorales@ivpressonline.com
By the numbers
82.4 births per 1,000 U.S.-born Hispanic women in 1990
65.4 births per 1,000 U.S.-born Hispanic women in 2010
136.9 births per 1,000 foreign-born Hispanic women in 1990
96.3 births per 1,000 foreign-born Hispanic women in 2010
To comment on this story click here to be directed to Facebook.
