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.
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.