Just the Facts
Family Day 2019 and the Diversity of Families in Canada

Everyone in Canada is, or has been, a part of a family. The purpose of this Just the Facts edition is to celebrate families in Canada on Family Day 2019 (a statutory holiday in some provinces) by acknowledging their diversity and how they have changed over time. Data from the Census of Population and the General Social Survey together provide a snapshot of families today in the historical album of family life in Canada.

Children

• According to the 2016 Census, 7 in 10 children aged 0 to 14 (69.7%) were living with both of their biological or adoptive parents and without stepsiblings or half-siblings. Close to 2 in 10 children aged 0 to 14 (19.2%) were part of a lone-parent family, and 1 in 10 (9.8%) was part of a stepfamily. A small share of children (1.4%) were living without their parents.
• The 2016 Census enumerated 28,030 foster children aged 0 to 14.
• Close to 2.2 million children under the age of 15, or 37.5% of the total population of children in 2016, had at least one foreign born parent. 
• Among First Nations people, Métis and Inuit, children continue to make up a greater share of the population than seniors. Among the Aboriginal population in 2016, 8.7% were in the youngest age group (0 to 4 years), while 7.3% were seniors aged 65 and over. In contrast, among the non-Aboriginal population, 5.3% were children aged 0 to 4, while seniors accounted for more than triple this share (16.3%).

Parents

• About one in eight same-sex couples (12.0%) had children living with them in 2016, compared with about half of opposite-sex couples.
• Mothers in Canada provided nearly two-thirds (65%) of the total hours spent helping and caring for children according to the 2015 General Social Survey on Time Use. However, fathers were increasingly involved in helping and caring for their children. Nearly 49% of fathers provided help and care to their children in 2015, up from 33% in 1986. By comparison, 66% of mothers did so in 2015, the same proportion as in 1986.
• In 2015, on the Time Use Survey reference day, 27% of parents ate two or more meals with their children (under the age of 15), 39% ate only one meal with their children, and 34% did not eat a meal with their children that day.

Grandparents

• There were 7.5 million grandparents aged 45 and older in Canada in 2017—the highest number since the data started being collected—according to the General Social Survey (GSS) on Family. This was up from 7.0 million in 2011 and 5.4 million in 1995.
• Overall, more than three-quarters of grandparents had fewer than five grandchildren in 2017, compared with 43% in 1995.
• Foreign-born grandparents (9%) were more than twice as likely to live with at least one grandchild as their Canadian-born counterparts (4%).

Multigenerational households

• Between the 2001 and 2016 Censuses, multigenerational households - households that include at least three generations of the same family - rose the fastest (+37.5%) of all household types in Canada, well above the increase of 21.7% for all households. In 2016, 6.3% of Canada's population living in private households, or 2.2 million people, lived in a multigenerational household.
• One in eight households in Nunavut is multigenerational: in 2016, multigenerational households were most common in Nunavut (12.2%) and the Northwest Territories (4.3%), where there are large Aboriginal communities, as well as in Ontario (3.9%) and British Columbia (3.6%), the two provinces with the highest proportions of immigrants. 

Video: 2016 Census: The Canadian families of today and yesteryear