Overview

Abstract (English)

According to the last General Social Survey (GSS) on family, there were slightly over 500.000 stepfamilies living in Canada in 2001. These families represented 11,8% of all couples living with children of any given age in their household, and 9,2% of both one- and two-parent families comprising children (Statistics Canada 2002). These figures are a little higher than the percentage of 7% of stepfamilies observed in Germany among two-parent families comprising at least one child under the age of 18 (Teubner 2002a). The proportion of stepfamilies has been rising steadily over the past decades, as the rates of divorce and separation increased, and it is most likely to keep growing in the future as conjugal instability remains high. Stepfamilies, which comprise at least one child born from a previous relationship, differ in many respects from “intact families” that solely comprise children born to the ongoing couple, and they have sometimes been categorized as a form of dysfunctional families (Saint-Jacques 1998; Théry 1987). Yet, quantitative research on stepfamilies is still passably rare and international comparisons remain few, perhaps due to the difficulties encountered when trying to identify and analyse this type of families. This chapter aims to draw a broad portrait of current stepfamilies in Canada and to compare it against that described in Germany by Bien et al. (2002).

Abstract (French)

According to the last General Social Survey (GSS) on family, there were slightly over 500.000 stepfamilies living in Canada in 2001. These families represented 11,8% of all couples living with children of any given age in their household, and 9,2% of both one- and two-parent families comprising children (Statistics Canada 2002). These figures are a little higher than the percentage of 7% of stepfamilies observed in Germany among two-parent families comprising at least one child under the age of 18 (Teubner 2002a). The proportion of stepfamilies has been rising steadily over the past decades, as the rates of divorce and separation increased, and it is most likely to keep growing in the future as conjugal instability remains high. Stepfamilies, which comprise at least one child born from a previous relationship, differ in many respects from “intact families” that solely comprise children born to the ongoing couple, and they have sometimes been categorized as a form of dysfunctional families (Saint-Jacques 1998; Théry 1987). Yet, quantitative research on stepfamilies is still passably rare and international comparisons remain few, perhaps due to the difficulties encountered when trying to identify and analyse this type of families. This chapter aims to draw a broad portrait of current stepfamilies in Canada and to compare it against that described in Germany by Bien et al. (2002).