Census 2021: This Is How Many Married Couples, Families With Children Are There in Canada

Statistics Canada has released a detailed analysis of the composition of families and living arrangements in the country according to the 2021 census.

57% of adults in Canada were part of a couple (married or common law) and this is similar to the proportion exactly 100 years earlier, in 1921 (58%).

Credit: Statistics Canada

Among couples, marriage remains the predominant type of union as more than three-quarters (77%) of couples were married, with the remaining 23% living common law.

As per the report, 4.4 million people aged 15 and above lived alone in 2021. Canada has the second lowest proportion of one-person households at 3 in 10 households (29.3%) among the G7. Only the United States had a slightly smaller share (28.5% in 2021).

In 2021, most (98.5%) of Canada’s 8.6 million couples were different-gender couples, meaning they included one woman and one man and 1.5% of couples (127,640) were either same-gender couples, transgender couples or non-binary couples.

Same-gender couples, that is, a couple in which there were either two women or two men, and both members were cisgender, represented 1.1% of all couples.

Transgender or non-binary couples, in which at least one member was transgender or non-binary, represented about 1 in every 250 couples (0.4%).

Highlights – Children in Canada

Out of 10,262,925 families of all types, 5,976,755 families or 58.23% had children.
Canada has a total of 6,627,305 married-couple families and 1,949,275 common-law couple families.
The number of one-parent families in which the parent is a woman is 1,302,670.
The number of one-parent families in which a parent is a man is 383,670.
50% of couples have children. This is down from 51% in 2016 and 64% in 1981.
Over half a million (550,810) children aged 0 to 14 lived in a stepfamily in 2021, representing 9% of all children in this age group living in census families.
26,675 foster children aged 0 to 14 in 2021, down 10% from the 29,590 reported a decade earlier.
Couples living in Canada’s urban centres were more likely to have children at home (52%) in 2021 than those living outside of these areas (41%).
Milton (71%), Brampton (69%), Ajax (68%), Vaughan and Bradford West Gwillimbury (66% each), and Oakville (65%) had the highest proportion of children at home.
Quebec is the sole province where common-law couples with children outnumber married couples with children.
Common-law couples with children are more than four times as likely to be stepfamilies as their married counterparts.
Among same-gender couples with children, nearly four in five (79%) were couples with two women.

Credit: Statistics Canada

- Among couples with children, stepfamilies were considerably more common for same-gender couples (39%) than for different-gender couples (12%), transgender couples (16%) or non-binary couples (22%).
- Nearly 1 million (986,400) households in 2021 were composed of multiple generations of a family, two or more census families, or one census family living with additional persons not in a census family.

Credit: Statistics Canada

Among Canada’s census metropolitan areas (CMAs), the CMAs of Oshawa (48.7%), Toronto (46.6%), Windsor (44.7%), Hamilton (44.3%) and Barrie (41.5%), had the highest proportions of young adults living with their parents in 2021.
The CMAs of Red Deer (+6.9), Calgary (+4.5), Edmonton (+3.5), Saskatoon (+2.5) and Regina (+2.2), had the largest percentage point increase in proportion in the number of young adults living with their parents from 2016 to 2021.

Highlights – Marriage & Living Alone:

Credit: Statistics Canada

Most adults have a spouse or partner.
In 2021, more than three-quarters (77%) of couples were married, with the remaining 23% living common law.
Younger adults are less likely to be living as part of a couple—as alternatives like living alone, with roommates or with parents have become more common.
From 1981 to 2021, the number of common-law couples increased by 447%, this is a much faster growth than that of married couples over the same period (+26%).
The prevalence of common-law unions in Nunavut (52%), Quebec (43%) and the Northwest Territories (36%) are higher than in Sweden, which is the country with the highest rate of common-law unions at the national level (with one-third of couples living common law).

More couples live common law in rural parts of the country, compared with urban areas. 21% of couples lived common law in Canada’s large urban centres, just below the national average of 23% due to relatively larger populations of immigrant and racialized groups where marriage is more prevalent.
In young adulthood, most couples live under common law. Nearly 8 in 10 (79%) people aged 20 to 24 in couples in 2021 were not married.
99% of couples were married in Stanley, Rhineland (98%) and Winkler (96%) in Manitoba as these three rural municipalities had a relatively large population that is German-speaking and affiliated with the Mennonite religion.
Living common law is the norm for couples in the outer suburbs surrounding Québec and Montréal. Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval (68%), Saint-Apollinaire (64%), Stoneham-et-Tewkesbury (63%), Saint-Lin-Laurentides (63%) and Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier (61%) couple were living common law.
4.4 million people lived alone in 2021. Households composed of roommates— two or more people living together and not part of a census family—are the fastest-growing household type ( increased by 54% from 2001) in Canada But this still represented a small share of all of Canada’s households in 2021 (4%).

See the detailed reports here: