Ruben Elizondo’s family tree is decidedly top-heavy.

While his family is expanding — the 60-year-old’s five children have produced two grandchildren, and a third is on the way — each successive generation is bearing fewer children than the last.

In fact, Elizondo grew up one of 12.

Although being in a large family required sacrifice, “it’s a lot of fun having that atmosphere, having the oldest children around us,” he said. He wanted as large a family as he could.

But having a dozen children, with today’s cost of living and for higher education, was out of the question for him.

“Based on the times we’re living in right now, we couldn’t provide for all of them,” said Elizondo, who raised his family in North McAllen.

His pattern holds true for many Hispanic families in the Rio Grande Valley.

Even the most boisterous clans are tempering the number of children they have from generation to generation, while retaining the close-knit extended family bonds that are widely recognized as a staple in Hispanic culture.

Planning families

National Hispanic Heritage Month is observed Sept. 15-Oct. 15.

U.S. residents who identify as Hispanic hail from Mexico, Spain and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The U.S. Census Bureau has kept track of Hispanics’ impact on our nation for just about 30 years.

In the Rio Grande Valley, where Hispanics constitute a majority of residents, their decisions regarding family and children will determine the makeup of the area in the future.

For Vera Boda, when her son Joshua, now a high school senior, was born with a heart defect that required surgery, she and her husband put off another pregnancy — forever, as it turned out.

She worried her small family would be weird, although she had never planned for a large brood.

“When we had him, we thought he might be rare or feel odd,” she said recently. “But a lot of his friends are only children.”

In contrast, everyone she knew growing up had siblings.

Historically, birthrates among Hispanic families have soared above those of other ethnic groups in the United States.

But while the size of the average Hispanic family in Hidalgo County remains nearly twice the size of the average family in Texas overall, it has shrunk over the past 20 years.

Meanwhile, there are more families with two working parents who are balancing careers with child care and waiting longer to have children.

“Living in this country, in this area, at this point in time, most families need two working partners to support a family,” said Lydia Pesina, the director of the Diocese of Brownsville’s Family Life office in San Juan.

In addition, she said, “People’s viewpoint is different on how they plan families than it was a generation ago.”

Locally, while large families could support themselves through summertime migrant farm labor in the past, the changing market for agricultural work makes that more and more difficult for the dwindling number of families that work together.

Also, the expectations for each successive generation are higher. While first-generation immigrant families may struggle to put children through high school, their children may reach for college.

Call on me

Elizondo’s two oldest sons, Ruben and Jorge, are in their late 20s and early 30s, both professionals and college graduates, recently married and working on building families.

The two younger sons, Stephen and James, are still living at home while in school.

His middle child, Cathy, is eyeing medical school, he said — “she doesn’t want to get married until she finishes her education.”

Cathy’s plan is a far cry from her grandmother’s. Elizondo’s mother, Araceli, was married at 16 and had five children in Mexico, then another seven in the United States.

Her children were migrant farm laborers with their father in the summers.

Had Elizondo’s siblings followed his parents’ pattern, there would have been 144 grandchildren. As it is, Araceli Elizondo died in April with family all around her: pictures of her children and 60-odd grandchildren on the walls.

Elizondo’s Thanksgivings run in shifts.

One year, 88 siblings, nieces and nephews, children, grandchildren and in-laws come to his house to munch on three turkeys and 16 pies. Relatives came and went, trying to visit several homes over the course of the day.

The group is close-knit, even though siblings and other kin have relocated across the country.

He gave his nephew a job with him — Elizondo is an Allstate insurance agent — and gave the younger man his start in the business.

Several relatives, all of them real estate brokers, throw business Elizondo’s way.

“They sell the houses, and I insure ‘em,” he laughs.

And when Ruben’s brother broke his ankle jumping a fence, he called Elizondo before the ambulance.

“I called one of my clients who was a doctor, and even though it was after hours, he said come around back, and he took a look at it,” Elizondo said.

“There is always someone to rely on,” he said.

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Sara Perkins covers western Hidalgo County, Starr County and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4472.