Compared to unpaid leave, paid family leave may better help working parents balance the competing needs of job and family early in a child's life, among other advantages. Yet the United States remains one of only two countries in the world without a statutory national paid maternity leave policy, and one of the only high-income countries that…

Individuals can be money poor, time poor or both. While income is the most used indicator of poverty, broader indexes including non-monetary aspects of deprivation have been proposed and measured. As one such measure, our study focuses on the element of deprivation arising from the time deficit of many working people. The usual poverty threshold…

When looking at current data on families, it is important to examine many of the assumptions held concerning families. While families do share common needs and aspirations, it is unwise to invoke an image of the family which assumes that all families fulfill tasks in the same way. Practitioners in the fields of education and the social services…

The issue of integrating work and family responsibilities has been the subject of federal, provincial, and territorial policy planning and several task forces in Canada. This report plus executive summary, designed to inform the dialogue and stimulate continued discussion, brings together a wide variety of work-life facts and figures related to…

Canadian families differ from one another to the degree that it is now customary for researchers, helping professionals, teachers, and others to declare their interest in families, not "the family." The proliferation of different family forms has led some, who disregard the fact that the traditional family has had a very brief history,…

Family life in Canada is alive and well, even though it may seem at times to be under attack. Families are changing in the functions they serve. One of the significant changes has been the increase in the number of women with paying jobs outside the home. This change has not necessarily caused families to be better off economically. Today, both…

When Canadian parents look back on their own lives and the lives of their parents, they see changes across a generation that have profoundly affected their parenting experience, compared to when they themselves were young children. Supports for today's parents must take into consideration these changes that affect the care and nurturing of…