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THE CANADIAN FAMILY IS ALIVE AND WELL

By Randall Denley
Reprinted from the Ottawa Citizen
October 25, 2002

Editor's note: There is so much doom and gloom
written about the family. However, it is alive and well
in Canada today, as made clear in the following
article.

The latest census figures have brought predictable coverage of how the "traditional" Canadian family is crumbling, disappearing, atomizing. Choose your favourite verb, but you get the point. The traditional family is about as out as orange shag carpet.

The National Post's Anne Kingston said, "certainly the numbers make clear that we can no longer trot out that long-mythical 'Ozzie and Harriet' Mom-Pop-two-children nuclear family model as some kind of norm."

One television report on the census even showed a clip of "Leave it to Beaver" and noted that kind of family was disappearing. No kidding. Forty-five years ago.

Why do we persist in mocking families? When they're referred to as "mom, pop and the two kids," the implied sneer gives the impression that pop is some dork in a cardigan, mom bustles around the kitchen in an apron and the whole lot are lost in time. Modern families aren't like that at all, as everyone has surely observed.

The discussion has a kind of political subtext, because those who support the family are usually portrayed as right-wing, Bible-beating nuts who draw their concept of reality from 1950s sitcoms. Those who dismiss families as suburban boobs with barbecues are hip and progressive, attuned to what's really happening now.

Except what's really happening now is that 70.5 percent of families consist of married couples, with or without children under 25. How traditional. Single parents make up 15.7 per cent of families, but presumably many of them have migrated from the married-couple category because of divorce. That doesn't mean they've rejected the concept of family or marriage.

The remainder, 13.8 per cent, of families live common-law. Surveys have shown that three-quarters of that group eventually marry. Those numbers hardly constitute a collapse of the institution of marriage, and even the rising number of common-law couples in Canada is largely attributable to Quebec, where 44 per cent of them reside.

It's actually gratifying that so many people marry. As the noted American philosopher and talk-show psychologist Dr. Phil recently observed, fewer people are marrying because men have figured out that they can easily get sex without getting married, and women realize that they
Don't need a man to provide for them.

We're told that having children is out, because married couples with children under age 25 make up only 44 per cent of all couples. Yet an additional 7.4 per cent of common-law couples have dependent children, so it's fair to say that most families still have children.

The number of families with children is declining, but much of the explanation lies in the aging of baby boomers, not some new concept of family. The 45-64 age group has increased 36 per cent over the last 10 years, while the prime childbearing 25-34 group has shrunk by 18 per cent. Lower fertility is also a factor, but that was old news long before the census.

The children of the post-war boom have had their children and moved into new census categories such as couples without children, which account for 41 per cent of all families. That doesn't mean that they've never had children, just that their children have grown up and left home. The census doesn't capture that information.

Similarly, the increasingly popular living-alone category doesn't represent some new preference for solitude over family. Again, it's demographics. As the boom bulge ages, more of them are losing spouses. People are also living longer and staying longer in their own homes.

The family is actually so popular that parents can't get their children to leave home. It's astounding that 41 per cent of adults aged 20 to 29 live at home. One-third of unmarried men 30 to 34 are still hanging around, too.

Adultolescence, a term I'm sorry to say was coined by someone else, is a whole new stage in people's lives, and one that seems to go on a tad too long. In a way, though, it's a credit to families that parents and their adult children can continue to live together. If the traditional family was as dead as it's made out to be, wouldn't all these kids be rushing to get out the door?

Boiled down, the latest census tells us that people are getting older, and therefore there are fewer families with children and more people living as empty-nest couples or on their own. That's utterly predictable, and no reason to write an obituary for the family.

Some stories are best told with numbers. The state of the Canadian family isn't one of them.

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