Updated July 13, 2004

Household and family life

	Baby girl Photo: Loui Massicotte

"Back in my day..." "When I was your age..." Whether lecturing or regaling children with stories, today's parents and grandparents tell vastly different tales from those that will be told tomorrow.

Take for instance the early baby boomers, products of the unprecedented population explosion that followed the Second World War. Most of them likely grew up in a home with only one telephone—a rotary, and probably black. They can remember sharing rooms with their brothers or sisters, quarrelling over toys and a Toronto Maple Leafs' jersey. They went on Sunday drives. Their parents had probably married by their early twenties and the family was most likely a nuclear family—Mom, Dad and two, three or four kids, though Grandma and Grandpa visited frequently. And when a young woman got married, it was assumed that she would be a homemaker and child raiser, devoted to supporting her husband in his role as breadwinner.

Today, the family portrait is fundamentally different. Today's children will likely remember growing up in a home with few, if any, siblings. As a result, they probably had their own room, their own phone—possibly a cellular—and even their own computer with Internet access. They had plenty of ways to stay busy—watching television, driving to the mall and e-mailing friends. Mom and Dad likely would have waited until their mid- or late-twenties before marrying, and if they were still together, they would probably both have been working, struggling to juggle a myriad of responsibilities.

Though it has been transformed over the last half century, the family unit remains crucial to the fabric of Canadian society. Extended families, 'blended' families, lone-parent families, cohabiting couples, childless couples and same-sex couples have all come to complement the traditional family structure. Family types are more diverse nowadays. Couples desire fewer children. And marriages are less likely to last a lifetime.