Stats Canada misuses Census data

All the hype of the bureaucrats of Stats Canada has in it a lie.
Reports that 51% of Canadians have never been married is a spin. What age group did this stat cover? Age 15 and over. What a false and obvious way to skew statistics. And we pay these government spinners.

Take out all the age 15 to 18 or maybe even 15to20 group and what will the stats then say? 15-17 year olds, I think, are required to be in school generally , not to be married.

This intentional false presentation of facts from the Canadian Census report is unforgivable Stats Canada. If that is how you will misuse stats then next time around people should refuse to answer your questions.

-- CFAC

Weddings have lost their lustre;
Couples reject the mainstream

National Post - 2007.09.13
By Barbara Kay

I was 21 when I got married in the early 1960s, and not a moment too soon. I felt I was on the cusp of being perceived as an "old" bride. My older sister had married a month after her 19th birthday a few years before. Virtually everyone I knew was married and had become parents twice over before their 30th birthdays. I had my two at 25 and 27.

Fertility problems were rare, because women's fertility peaks between the ages of 15 and 25. The American writer John Updike published a wonderful story in The New Yorker: "When Everyone was Pregnant." That's what my world was like when I was in my twenties: Everyone was pregnant.

Statistics Canada has just published its 2006 Canadian Family Portrait, and not only is everyone not pregnant any more, it seems that marriage is now unfashionable. For the first time in the census' history, more Canadian adults - more than 51% of adults - have never been married.

Even 20 years ago, more than 60% were married. Common-law families - the most popular arrangement in Quebec for many years now - have surged by 18.9% since 2001, and lone-parent families, 80% of which are headed by women, jumped by 7.8%. The number of households without children has risen sharply, by 11.2%, and so has the number of one-person households, by 11.8%. Lots of gay people are forming households, as might be expected with the legalization of gay marriage, even though only 16.5% of Canada's 45,345 same-sex couples actually chose marriage. Diversity seems to be the theme in 2006: marry, don't marry, live common-law with no kids, live alone and have kids, or just live alone.

There is no template for "coming of age." Still, notes Anne Milan, senior analyst with Statistics Canada demography division, even though fewer Canadians are getting married, marriage remains "the single most common foundation on which Canadians build a family." Marriage overall "remains an important family structure." For how long? How long can an institution remain important when it is not privileged, either in law or in the reigning ideological discourse, as more worthy than other lifestyle choices?

Ms. Milan's words sound more wistfully hopeful than optimistic. More and more, marriage is beginning to look like a kind of vestigial ritual undertaken by those from certain ethnic communities or out of respect for one's old-fashioned parents, one without any particular inherent social, moral or civic status to make of it an aspirational goal or an achievement of any special kind. The state does not reward you if you marry; it doesn't penalize you if you don't. Society doesn't think more or less of you, whether you have a wedding ring or just live together.

Why were we so eager to marry in the past? I mean, aside from the obvious reason that one was allowed to have sex without guilt, with finally a place of one's own to have it in. (There were people who bravely lived "in sin," but not in the same city as their parents; the scandal would have been too much for them to bear.) It was because in marrying, we actually felt we had changed. We had crossed an existential threshold and became a contributing member of society. Marriage was perceived as an exciting adventure and a symbol that one was at last mature, ready for responsibility, worthy of respect. People who failed to marry by their thirties were pitied. It was assumed there was something "wrong" with them.

Looking back, I have to marvel at the eagerness with which we gave up our freedom and turned our backs on the idea of other options. It was because society made us feel we were more important than we had been before, as single people. We were important because we were going to have children. Society approved of that. Trickling tributaries before, we had joined the mainstream.

We're all tributaries now, free to meander here and there in freedom, which has been, since the 1960s, the reigning value in Western society.

But when tributaries feel no compulsion to seek the river, the river slows and muddies. We're drying up as a society, because we have turned our backs on the idea of marriage as meaningful, as the step to children and regenerating society. We have turned our back on the mainstream.

So, who needs marriage, anyway?

Thank heavens for gay marriage. Without it, the most ancient of all our social institutions would be in even worse decline than it already is.
In the mere span of a generation, marriage between men and women has fallen dramatically out of fashion - so much so that married people are the newest Canadian minority. For the first time since Statistics Canada has collected data, more than half of us (age 15 and over) are unmarried - they've either never married or they're divorced, separated, widowed or living common-law.

Millions of Canadians have asked themselves: "Who needs marriage, anyway?" and answered, "Not me." Why has marriage become optional? The decline of religion is probably the biggest factor. That goes hand in hand with liberalizing social attitudes, the revolution in the role of women and a radical redefinition of what marriage is all about. We used to think that the main purpose of marriage was to raise children. Now we think it's to make us happy. And if doesn't make us happy, we leave.

Another reason is that far more people are living common-law, without benefit of vows. This trend is especially strong among young couples in their 20s, who aren't quite ready to settle down and commit for good, and also among aging boomers, many of whom were married before and feel no need to tie the knot again. Forty years ago, we called it "shacking up," and it was regarded as distinctly lower-class behaviour. But today, more than 15 per cent of families are common-law. Common-law relationships are perfectly acceptable in every social class, especially in Quebec. And plenty of anxious mothers advise their daughters to live with the guy for a while before they marry him.

But if you think marriage is a quaint and useless social relic, think again. Marriage has powerful effects on social mobility and wealth accumulation. Some say it distinguishes the haves from the have-nots.

It's hardly news that single-parent families are significantly poorer than two-parent families, or that the children of single parents (a quarter of all children) generally do worse in life.

After all, two-parent families usually have two incomes to invest in their kids, as well as far more parental energy and time. But there is more to it than that. Author Kay Hymowitz (Marriage and Caste in America
) argues that middle-class kids in two-parent households are "socialized for success." This means they get better jobs and better educations, and are more likely to form stable unions with people who are a lot like them.

In fact, attitudes toward marriage and single motherhood vary widely by socioeconomic status. Very few young women from affluent families choose to have children out of wedlock - not because it's immoral, but because they don't want to sabotage their educations, their careers and the life chances of their offspring. And when they do, it's usually because they haven't gotten round to marrying the father, not because he's scrammed.

Meantime, more and more young women from the lowest income groups are passing up on marriage (but not kids). In their neighbourhoods, single motherhood is the norm. And their kids, who grow up without exposure to stable families, are unlikely to form ones themselves.

This marriage gap, argues Ms. Hymowitz, entrenches poverty and creates a society of "separate and unequal families." (Common-law relationships fall somewhere between marriage and single parenthood in their effect on kids. They don't last as long as marriages, so the kids are more likely to wind up in single-parent households.) Then, too, many of the old cliches turn out to be true. Men who marry tend to sober up, buckle down and work harder. American economist Robert Lerman estimates that the "marriage wage premium" - the extra money a man brings in once he's married - amounts to around 18 per cent. Marriage encourages both spouses to save and invest for the future, and allows them to act as each other's buffer against life's setbacks.

Given all the benefits of marriage, it's not surprising that gay men and women are giving it a try. It's just too bad the rest of us are not.
Married people are richer. They have nicer houses, and more successful children, and they can split the household chores to boot. Besides, there's always someone there to warm their feet.

And what could possibly be better than that?