Modern family life in Canada typically entails two parents working, often with both holding down full-time jobs, new data published Wednesday show. There are also a greater number of stay-at-home dads and many, many more single-parent families across the country.
Statistics Canada data released on the federal agency’s website Wednesday shows a sharp decrease in the number of single-income families with two partners between the present and the mid-1970s.
“Between 1976 and 2014, the number of single-earner families with a stay-at-home parent declined from 1.5 million to 500,000,” the federal statistics agency said.
Today, three quarters of working couples with children hold down two full-time jobs, the agency’s study on employment patterns said.
Labour experts and historians have long noted the gradual entrance of more and more women into the workforce since the end of the Second World War, a phenomenon that’s taken place across advanced economies for a variety of reasons.
Stay-at-home dads
As more women have entered the workforce in recent decades, more Canadian men are staying home to care for kids, according to StatsCan data.
More than one in ten stay-at-home parents are fathers today. That compares to just two per cent in 1976.
Lone parents
StatsCan also said the number of single parents with at least one child under 16 has risen significantly. In 1976, there were less than 300,000 single-parent households, compared to almost 700,000 today.
Approximately one in five households with children were single-parent in 2014, compared to one in 10 in the mid-1970s.
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