Changing Family Trends

Editor: Justin Healey
ISBN 978 1 921507 21 2
Year 2010

Price: $20.95

  

Changing Family Trends
Volume 310, Issues in Society

Over the past thirty or so years, major social trends in marriage and work patterns have impacted on Australian family formation and structures. Families are very diverse and can take many shapes and forms, extending across a number of households. This book explores changing family trends and presents an overview of characteristics which define the Australian family in its many evolving guises. Lone parent families, step and blended families and same-sex families are all examined in the light of major social shifts including the trend toward smaller families, both parents being in the workforce, divorce, later life partnering, the decline in marriage in favour of de facto relationships, women having children on their own, and access to reproductive technologies for gay and lesbian couples. Despite this diversity, ‘nuclear’ couple families with dependent children are still the norm. What really is the future of the family?

Glossary; Fast Facts; Web Links; Index



fast facts
FAST FACTS from this volume
  • The composition of Australian families has changed con-siderably over recent times. Most children still grow up in a two-parent family, and most couples stay in their first marriage. At the same time, families are getting smaller and are less likely to contain children. People are less likely to marry and more people are living alone. With relationship breakdown more common, people are more likely to experience changes to who they live with over time.
  • Family means different things to different people. It is diff-icult to talk about the ‘typical Australian family’, especially as society and families change. Families may span several generations, several households, and may change in response to life events such as divorce, remarriage, and children leaving the parental home. It is sometimes easier to define the family according to what it does rather than what it looks like – caring, supporting, protecting and loving are what families have in common.
  • The major changes occurring to families in Australia reflect demographic, social and economic trends, as well as changing values, attitudes and aspirations. Australia’s population is ageing, for example, and fertility is lower now than in the past. Australians now undertake more education, change jobs more often, marry or form partnerships later, and have fewer children later, if at all. Separation and repartnering are more common than they were 30 years ago.
  • A key change for Australian families is the decline in average household size. Average household size has declined from 3.6 people per household in 1954 to 2.5 people per household in 2006; this decline is projected to continue gradually. The decrease in household size is in part due to lower fertility rates and because more people are now living alone. At the same time, family types have also changed. Couples with dependent children have long been the most common family type in Australia. Recently, however, this group is beginning to be overtaken by couple-only families. These family types each made up around 37% of all families in 2006.
  • Couples with dependent children have gradually decreased (from 48% in 1976 to 37% in 2006), and couple-only families have increased (from 28% in 1976 to 37% in 2006). This is partly a result of population ageing, with more ‘empty nesters’ (older couples whose children have grown up and left home) than in the past. Also, there are more younger couples delaying having children or not having children at all.
  • In 1976, one-parent families with dependents comprised 7% of all families; by 2006 this had increased to 11%. The number of one-parent families with children under 15 headed by a woman remains higher than those headed by a man – by around seven times.
  • By 2026, couples without children are projected by the ABS to be the most common type of family in Australia (44% of all families). One-parent families are projected to change little as a proportion of all families. These changes to family type will have implications across a range of areas, including future community services and infrastructure.
  • More people are living in de facto relationships than in the past, relationships are more likely to break up, and marriage bears a less direct relationship to having children. The number of children people are having is much lower than in the 1960s and 1970s.
  • Couple families (where the children are the natural or adopted children of both parents) are still the most common type of family with children under 18 years. In 2006-07 they made up 73% of all families with children under 18.
  • One-parent families make up 20% of families with children under 18. Step and blended families make up about 7% of all families with children under 18. Since 1992 there has been a slight decrease in couple families and a slight increase in one-parent families, and almost no change in the proportion of step and blended families.
  • The 2006 Census suggests there are around 26,000 same-sex couples, making up less than 1% of all couple families. Around 11% of these families (or 2,900 families) had one or more children of any age living with them. This is likely to be an underestimate of the number of same-sex couples as some couples may not choose to identify as ‘same-sex’ in the Census.
  • In 2006-07 there were around 14,000 grandparent-headed families with children under 18 years (less than 1% of all families with children).
  • In 2006 a small proportion of households (1.3% or 93,200) were comprised of more than one family living together. Most of these (80%) consisted of three generations of parents, children and grandchildren living together.
  • In 2006-07 there were 7,000 families containing one or more foster children.
  • The number of families with adopted children is not known. However, only a small number of children are adopted in Australia each year (568 in 2006-07). Adoptions have decreased considerably since the 1970s and are now largely made up of adoptions of children from overseas (71% of adoptions in 2006-07).
  • In 2006-07 there were just over a million children aged under 18 years (22% of all children under 18 years) who had a parent living at a different location. For a substantial minority of these children, contact with their non-resident parent is very limited. Around 4% saw their non-resident parent daily, while 9% saw their non-resident parent at least once a fortnight or once a week. However, 28% saw their non-resident parent less than once a year or never.
  • Changing family structures have important implications. Smaller families may mean that people are less likely or less able to rely on their families to provide care if they are ill or have a disability. They may also have implications for the planning of housing and community infrastructure. As families continue to diversify and their living arrangements become more complex, government service delivery systems may need to change to meet the needs of all family types.
  • The majority of Australian children live with both their parents until they leave home and begin to form their own families. In 2006, the living arrangements for children under 15 years old were: 74% with both of their biological parents; 18% in a lone-parent family (virtually all with their mother); 6% in a step- or blended family; and 2% in other living arrangements.
  • From around age 16, young peoples’ living arrangements start to change as they leave home and start to form a life more independent from their parents. In 2006, between the ages of 16 and 20, the proportion of young people living with at least one parent fell from 92% to 58%.
  • Families provide support and help to their members in a variety of ways, including help with domestic work, home maintenance, gardening, transport, running errands, child care, and providing emotional support and financial assistance.
  • One in five families is a stepfamily or blended family, with experts predicting this statistic will rise as divorce rates increase and people re-partner later in life. The number of blended families, in which children from parents’ current and previous marriages live in the same household, rose by 17 per cent in the past decade, compared with just 1.2 per cent for nuclear families. Latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figure show there are about 175,000 blended or stepfamilies with children aged 0-17.