2006 Census: Family portrait: Continuity and change in Canadian families and households in 2006: Findings

By Anne Milan, Mireille Vézina and Carrie Wells, Demography Division, Statistics Canada

• Highlights
• National portrait
  • Census families
    • Common-law couple families increasing much faster than married-couple families
      • For the first time, more census families comprised of couples without children than with children
    • Same-sex married couples counted for the first time
    • Lone-parent families: Upward trend has stabilized since 2001
      • More never-married lone parents and fewer widowed
      • Lone-mother families remain the majority of lone-parent families but growth is higher for lone-father families
  • Households
    • Household size continues to decline
      • Large increase in number of one-person households
  • Individuals
    • Legal marital status: Unmarried people outnumber married people for the first time
    • Living as part of a common-law couple growing rapidly, especially for older age groups
      • More common-law partners divorced than never-married after age 50
    • Living as part of a couple peaks for women in their late thirties
    • Increasing proportion of children aged 14 and under live with common-law parents
      • Some children shared a home with grandparents
    • Higher proportion of children aged 4 and under with mothers in their forties
    • Fewer young adults aged 20 to 29 in couples
    • More young adults aged 20 to 29 living in the parental home
• Provinces and territories
  • Newfoundland and Labrador: Highest proportion of young adults aged 20 to 29 living in the parental home
  • Prince Edward Island: Third highest proportion of married-couple families
  • Nova Scotia: Lowest proportion of households with couples and children
  • New Brunswick: Second highest proportion of common-law-couple families of all provinces after Quebec
  • Quebec: More than one-third of couples live common-law
  • Ontario: Highest proportion of married-couple families in Canada
  • Manitoba: Highest proportion of lone-parent families among the provinces
  • Saskatchewan: Lowest growth of census families in the country
  • Alberta: Fastest growth of census families among all the provinces
  • British Columbia: Growth of census families above national average
  • Yukon: Highest proportion of one-person households
  • Northwest Territories: Second highest proportion of households with couples and children after Nunavut
  • Nunavut: One-third of households consist of five or more people
• Subprovincial changes
  • Close to one-quarter of common-law-couple families in Canada lived in Montréal and Québec
  • Half of same-sex couples lived in three CMAs
  • Close to one in five families were lone parents in six CMAs
    • Half of the municipalities with the lowest proportion of lone-parent families were located in Alberta
  • Households with couples and children growing faster in regions with rapidly growing populations
    • Households with couples and children tend to be in the suburbs of CMAs…
    • … and in rural areas close to CMAs
    • Links between population growth and high percentage of households with couples and children for some municipalities
    • Over half of the 25 municipalities showing lowest proportions of households with couples and children located in British Columbia
  • Nearly six in 10 young adults in the Toronto CMA lived in the parental home
    • Pattern observed for CMAs also true for mid-size urban centres

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