Family

Family is a social institution that reflects individual women's choices about reproduction, family decisions concerning children, as well as community factors, such as the availability of birth control and cultural values surrounding children. This chapter will look at Aboriginal women and their families, including variables such as census family structure, marital status, birth rate, and fertility.

Table 3-1: Total Female Population by Marital Status, 1996

A fair degree of similarity exists among women with respect to marital status (Table 3-1). All Aboriginal groups reported that more than 50% of women had never been married, while on the other hand, non-Aboriginals had a considerably lower percentage at 38%. Thirty-four percent of Aboriginal women reported being married compared to 47% for the female non-Aboriginal population. It should be noted that the category "married" includes those who are living common law. The percentage of women reporting themselves as "divorced" was lower for on-reserve Registered Indian women and Inuit women than the other groups. Non-Aboriginal women were almost twice as likely to report "widowed" status (8%), likely due to their more aged population.

Table 3-2: Census Families by Census Family Structure, 1996

Marital status can be examined at an aggregate level through the variable census family structure (Table 3-2). This variable provides data for "husband-wife families" (including common-law), "male lone parents" and "female lone parents". The majority of census families, parents with their unmarried children who live in the same dwelling, in 1996 had two parents. Seventy-two percent of Registered Indian families living off reserve are dual-parent. This compares to 86% for non-Aboriginal families. Few census families, Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal, are lead by a male lone-parent. Just over 5% of Registered Indian families living on-reserve are male lone-parent compared to 2% for non-Aboriginal families. The percentage of female lone-parent families is 19% for Registered Indians on-reserve compared to 12% for non-Aboriginals. The prevalence of female lone-parent families was even higher for those living off reserves covering 25% of these census families.

Across Aboriginal ethnic groups the number of children (includes children from adoption and blended families) in census families varies significantly. Readers should not confuse this with fertility rate which reflects the number of children a woman actually bears in her lifetime.

Census families with no children were twice as common among non-Aboriginal families than among Inuit families. Among all groups, families with one or two children generally accounted for 25-30% of families each. A significant difference again appeared with regard to census families with three or more children. Non-Aboriginal families were far less likely to have three or more children (12%) than Inuit families (34%).

Figures 3-1 and 3-2 provide visual illustration of the number of children non-Aboriginal and Inuit families reported in the 1996 Census. More than half of Inuit families had two or more children, while more than half of non-Aboriginal families were childless or had only one child.

The birth rate is the annual number of live births per 1,000 people in a population. High birth rates can reflect the influence of biological, environmental or cultural factors on a population. High birth rates, for example, can be a response to a high infant mortality rate. In certain cultures, in which family members are needed to provide labour or social security, a high demand for offspring maybe present. The birth rate for Registered Indians in 1996 was 24.6 per 1,000. This means that for every 1,000 Registered Indians, approximately 25 babies were born. The birth rate for Registered Indians has been decreasing, and it is projected to fall to 21 by the year 2008. The birth rate for the total Canadian population was 12.3 per 1,000 in 1996. Although the birth rate for Registered Indians is projected to fall, it is still two times that of the general Canadian population. This is consistent with a young population.

The fertility rate of a population reports how many children on average each 1,000 women will have during their child bearing years. The projected fertility rate for Registered Indians in 1996 was 2.7. Thus each woman per 1,000 would bear 3 children in her lifetime. There is a difference, however, in the projected fertility of Registered Indians living on and off reserves. Registered Indians living on reserves had a projected fertility rate of 3.2. This is significantly higher than the off-reserve projected fertility rate of 2.4.1 The fertility rate of all Canadian women in 1996 was 1.6.

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