Canada Ping!
Posted on 09/20/2012 7:12:50 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
What’s the news in the fresh release of census data about families? According to the headlines, Canadian families have evolved into a riot of diversity, with a blended-family Brady Bunch on every block and a kid with two daddies in every playgroup. This is either good or bad, depending on which way you lean. If you lean toward the left, it’s all worth celebrating. What an inclusive, tolerant, progressive society we are becoming! If you lean toward the right, you can smell the social rot. The family is crumbling, and the children won’t be all right.
But the real news in the census is how traditional we still are. More than two-thirds of us (67 per cent) still live in married-couple families. We still believe in getting hitched – we just put it off till later. If that’s not a vote of confidence for the most ancient and conservative of social institutions, I don’t know what is. Even gay couples are rushing to the altar – men more than women, surprisingly. What’s with that? Are gay women more cynical about marriage? Are gay men more bourgeois? Or do they just like to dress up? Sadly, Statistics Canada doesn’t say.
In Toronto, the most diverse city in the country and with the most varied family arrangements, it’s likely that the majority of your friends’ kids live (yawn) with their original mom and dad. Fewer than one in five Canadian children (19.5 per cent) live in a household headed by a single parent, and the percentage of single-parent families (16.3 per cent) has barely budged in a decade. Only 12.6 per cent of families include a stepmother or stepfather, and only 5 per cent are blended, which means the kids are a mix of his, hers and/or theirs.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
NOTE:
* Fewer than one in five Canadian children (19.5 per cent) live in a household headed by a single parent, and the percentage of single-parent families (16.3 per cent) has barely budged in a decade.
* Only 12.6 per cent of families include a stepmother or stepfather, and only 5 per cent are blended, which means the kids are a mix of his, hers and/or theirs.
* For children with two moms or dads, statistically they scarcely exist. Same-sex couples account for only 0.8 per cent of all couples in Canada, and only 9.4 per cent of those have kids at home. So the number of kids with same-sex parents amounts to a vanishingly small percentage of all the kids in Canada.
* Canadian marriage rates are higher and divorce rates are lower.
* Twenty-seven per cent of American children live in single-parent families. And the number of children born to unmarried mothers – especially to women in their 20s – is soaring. In 2010, 40.8 per cent of births in the U.S. were to unmarried women. That rate is growing fastest among the white lower-middle class – the very people who tend to vote Republican and loudly thump the tub for traditional family values. In Canada, the unmarried birth rate is holding steady at 27.2 per cent.
* Canadian Immigrants: Chinese and South Asians – divorce rates are lower and unmarried motherhood is virtually unknown. In the U.S., by contrast, the biggest immigrant group is Hispanic, in which unmarried mothers are the norm.
Do Canadians have “comprehensive immigration reform” or a ‘DREAM’ Act? If Soetoro is reelected, they may see me slinking across the border some night.
Ping!
Surprise! So is every other country on the planet.
http://www.chatelaine.com/en/article/20919—marriage-vs-cohabitation-why-so-few-are-saying-i-do
“The Ottawa-based Vanier Institute of the Family’s annual Families Count: Profiling Canadian Families reported earlier this fall that less than half of Canadians, 49.7 per cent, were married and that common-law couples experienced a jump in popularity, accounting for 15.5 per cent of those surveyed in 2006 (the report is based on the 2006 Canadian Census). That’s increased from almost 10 per cent of the number of common law couples Canada had in 1981.”
California recognizes “common law” marriages—what even it’s courts, Marvin v. Marvin, called `meretricious’ relationships—and I suppose some others may, I don’t know, but my state and most American states don’t acknowledge `living together’ marriages, otherwise known as “shacking-up.” Conservative, in deed.
About 25% of non-Hispanic White children live in single parent homes.
About 40% of Hispanic children live in single parent homes.
About 66% of African-American children live in single parent homes.
The government fiscal policy might be more conservative but otherwise... meh
California does not recognize common law marriages and that is not what Marvin vs Marvin recognized.
It will enforce implied or verbal contracts between cohabitants.
If man ask a woman to give up her job in order to be a “housewife” if they break up he owes her for lost career advancement. And vice versa I guess now too if rich cougar gets a hubby.
Lee Marvin paid no where near half his estate to his ex but about $100k for her to go to school,get marketable skills and “make her whole.”
Canada Ping!
There’s a certain demographic in the U.S. that tends to play havoc with all kinds of statistics.
Every Province here recognizes common-law marriages. In Ontario, if a couple lives together for more than a year or if they have children together, their rights and obligations are the same as if they were married.
Well,we are not part of the Common Wealth.
We are a revolutionary Republic.
Our Supreme Court held long ago that all English Common law not codified in US Law or in American Court Precedent is null and void.
Hardly. They are a nation of PC socialists with their Human Rights tribunals and protected victim classes and VAT taxes and sky-high consumer prices and a dying church presence overall and a disarmed populace in general. They are socialist Europe on North American soil.
BULLSH*T! As an ex-canukistani originally from Saskatchewan and grew up mostly in BC.
How can kandastan still force people to buy healthcare at every province? (obamacare canadian style)
How can kanadastan (or BC) still force people to buy govt run automobile insurance (ICBC) and strangle private car insurance companies?
How come kanadastan and their provinces still make every province pay more in equalization payments but Quebec, the biggest corrupt province in canada put a gun to each province’s head and make them pay the majority?
kanadastan, by poll, has the biggest acceptance of abortion in north America, beating even Americans.
I could go on for the night..
Little rambling follows. Hope you find it entertaining or even informative. ;-)
In my remote, sparsely populated area with a brutally cold climate (colder than southern parts of Canada because of the extreme elevation here and proximity to peaks), it appears that some of the increase in crime is of the organized kind. Won’t go further into that. Most of the increase in more common kinds of crime appear to be committed by former middle class folks (examples: cattle rustling, burglaries, vandalism, etc.). No stats, only from observing, anecdotal.
IMO, poverty doesn’t breed crime, but immorality does. Most of the more noticeable, new crimes will be committed by those of the former middle class. Consider as to how they’ve conducted themselves in office politics and on the highways. Common knowledge.
The population will get generally poorer, though. Get a strong umbrella, because it will be raining more of the middle class. It’s doubtful that our government will starve the enormous numbers of food stamp recipients. If and when (likely when) the default process concludes with some sort of repudiation and currency adjustment, any “marauders” will much more likely be of the kind seen in Wisconsin or locations of other riots administered and carried out by members of the former middle class: teachers, police, all. Also, see Greece and other occurrences with similarities.
As for mobs marauding and the like, I understand that prediction coming from folks who live in suburbs near high crime neighborhoods. What they see is different from what I see (seldom human visitors, always wilderness, long way to the city). And they only see the news about neighborhood troublemakers. Even rough neighborhoods, you see, are mostly inhabited by people who are law abiding and peaceful. Lived in one once, myself, when I was much younger. More social conservatives than most outsiders could imagine.
Grand scenarios of death and destruction also tend to come from people who feel that they’ve run out of options or have intolerably boring lives (think Walter Mitty).
And have a closer look at our own neighborhoods (i.e., white, middle or lower middle class). Degrading, of course, thanks to the “progressives” and pals in both political parties. The followers of Charles Fourier (early feminists, other romanticists), who might have been the first communist, would be proud. Sincere politeness is more scarce.
But fuel prices will probably continue going up. Manufacturing is increasing in foreign countries, as are numbers of drivers (potentially, billions). So will mobility decrease for would-be marauders. And most of ‘em are obese.
If they began to starve, as in most generalizing “SHTF” scenarios, they would be too weak to march far (not that they’ve ever tried to actually march far or even learned to march). Stress fractures would prevail. [Stress fracture: injury known by soldiers of the real combat type in their initial training, re. their few buddies who don’t adequately process their 9,000+ calories per day.]
In other end-of-the-world scenarios, fuel would not be available at all (e.g., the EMP attack scenario). Electricity is required for pumping fuel, and that “JIT” (just-in-time) distribution system would apply to fuel supplies more than it would to food (National Guard, other humanitarian groups, commodities to the rescue).
Earlier, I mentioned immorality. Further increases in immorality in our population could be a “game changer,” so to speak. If enough of us were spoiled rotten enough, maybe we could emulate characters from a zombie movie. We’ll see. If so, maybe we would deserve the “live by the sword...die by the sword” consequence. But then austerity has a way of historically making us to be good. Fitting punishment, too.
Evil folks are tactically challenged. Pride goes before the fall. They aren’t very adept at considering consequences before their moves.
We’ll see. But IMO, we’ll only get poorer, for the most part. We won’t go out with in a glorious swarm of cannibalism, unless suburban cynicism and apathy have crept even further in my absence than known to me.
As for me, high, dry and cold on the Rockies, in the middle of nowhere, and for our Canadian brothers and sister way up north, maybe we’ll see frozen, middle class, city-slicker zombies during spring/summer runoff. For me, it would be an interesting change from reading about local finds of frozen tourists and metropolitan adventurers. Maybe not. We’ll see.
Hmmm...coyote cleanup crew reminded me to hit the rack soon. ;-)
U.S. birth rate is still 33% higher than Canada’s.
Canada Birth rate: 10.28 births/1,000 population (2011 est.)
U.S. Birth rate: 13.68 births/1,000 population (2011 est.)
Both falling way behind Pakistan and Libya...
Pakistan Birth rate: 24.3 births/1,000 population (2011 est.)
Libya Birth rate: 23.47 births/1,000 population (2011 est.)
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