Another significant factor to consider is the increase in the variety of routes in which a couple may have children...
6
The Transition in Canadian Families
In the Western Culture, it used to be the social norm to leave high school and soon after, find a companion who you would marry young and begin a family with. However, today's generation has drastically strayed from this social norm in ways such as: choosing not to be married, acknowledging the importance of career, choosing to become divorced more often etc.
First and foremost, there are variations on marriage such as the existence of common law, which used to be very rare, if even existing, a few decades ago. Also, with an increasingly tough economy, individuals are choosing to focus on their careers and education before settling down for a family. In fact, according to a 2011 Canadian census, the average age to get married is 28 for women and 31 for men. These increased ages play a major role on childbirth as the later the age to settle down with a spouse, the smaller the time frame left ffor childbirth as a women's fertility rate decreases by half by the age of 40. In retrospect, the number of children per family has drastically decreased in comparison to decades ago where the norm was a large family. Although, this could also be due to a high increase in birth control availability (the pill, IUD etc).
Next, in recent years there has been a large increase in divorce rates throughout Canada. Specifically in Ontario in 2008, 42.1% of all marriages ended in divorce. This is drastic if compared to older Western culture as getting divorced was quite the rare occurance. This has decresed fertility as parents who are experiencing conflict, do not choose to have a child as soon as they would be introducing their child into an unstable relationship.
Fortunately, modern time has brought both new technology and other options for parent's who wish to have children and cannot conceive. Adoption is a very popular method, as are fertility treatments which thanks to technology, comes in various forms to assist in the process on conceiving (ex. pills, surgical procedures, assisted contraception etc.).
-Miranda Klaver, 35