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Or sign-in if you have an account.“The data suggest that for many Canadian women and men, achieving the family life they desire remains a challenge,” reads the report "Home Alone" by Cardus, an Ontario-based non-partisan Christian think tank. Photo by Dimas - stock.adobe.comFirst Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorWith Canada currently charting one of the lowest birthrates on Earth, a new survey finds that if young Canadians felt able to, they would happily be posting one of the highest fertility rates in the Western world.“The data suggest that for many Canadian women and men, achieving the family life they desire remains a challenge,” reads the report “Home Alone” by Cardus, an Ontario-based non-partisan Christian think tank.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThe new report relies on a survey of 3,000 Canadian adults commissioned by Cardus and conducted by the Angus Reid Group last July. It found that when Canadians between 18 and 44 were asked to name their “ideal” family size, women reported wanting an average of 1.97 children, while men wanted an average of 2.13.Both figures are vastly higher than Canada’s current fertility rate of just 1.25 children per woman.While family size does not directly correlate into national fertility rate, the results show that Canadians would ideally favour a society where every woman is having two children, but are instead living in one where birth rates are just 60 per cent of that.Given that there are about seven million Canadian women between the ages of 18 and 44, this suggests a gap of millions of babies; the difference between all those women having two children, versus the average of 1.25 they’re currently having.“Across most ethnic or linguistic groups, Canadians generally desire to have around two children,” read the report.In 2024, Statistics Canada first confirmed that Canadian fertility rates had reached a record low of 1.25 children per woman, officially placing Canada in a small club of “ultra-low fertility” countries such as Italy (1.18), South Korea (0.75) and Japan (1.15).But if Canadians were hitting their “ideal” fertility rate of two children per woman, Canada would instead be a statistical outlier among wealthy countries in the sheer quantity of babies it was producing.As per the latest World Bank data, a fertility rate of two would put Canada well ahead of the European Union (1.3), the U.K. (1.6) and even the United States (1.6).This is the second time that Cardus has published data showing a vast differential between the number of Canadian babies being born, and the “ideal” number that Canadians would want.In 2023, when Canada’s fertility rate still stood at 1.4, a similar survey found that nearly half all of Canadian women had families that were smaller than they would have liked.“Women in Canada at the end of their reproductive years have about 0.5 fewer children than they desire, on average,” it read. The Cardus report found that while Canadians of virtually all demographic groups were uniform in their desire for two child families, the biggest gap in “fertility ideals” showed up among religious groups, with Protestants easily leading the charge in terms of desired family sizes.In the latest survey, Cardus found that the Canadian dream for two-child families was about as strong, but that fewer were coming close to reaching it.Among Canadians getting to the end of their childbearing years, a majority reported having fewer children than they would have liked. Of survey respondents between the ages of 40 and 44, 59 per cent of men and 53 per cent of women reported having a family that was smaller than desired.Canada’s plummeting fertility rate is often blamed on economic factors, particularly in the realm of housing affordability. A 2023 survey by Statistics Canada, for instance, found that 38 per cent of Canadians in their 20s “did not believe they could afford to have a child in the next three years.”But the Cardus results show that while money is a factor, it’s just one of a web of reasons as to why Canadians aren’t having children at the rate they would prefer.One of the more illuminating findings being that as Canadians got richer, their desire for children actually went down.Among women who lived in households earning between $50,000 and $100,000, the “ideal” number of children stood at an average of 2.32. But among women living in households earning more than $150,000, this dropped to 2.02.In fact, when women were asked what was stopping them from having their desired rate of children, the chief concern wasn’t financial, but “life-course factors” such as still being in school, wanting “to grow as a person” or not having a partner.Just 56 per cent of women cited “financial concerns” as getting in the way of their fertility desires, against 71 per cent who cited “life-course factors.”“While rates of marriage and family formation have declined in Canada, this is not because of some great divergence in family desires between women and men, as both sexes share similar fertility desires,” said the report.The new Cardus survey fits in with similar data from the United States.Although U.S. fertility rates have also been in a sustained plunge for much of the last 20 years, poll data has shown that Americans would gladly have millions more children, but increasingly lack the wherewithal to do so.A September poll by Gallup found that even with U.S. fertility rates dropping below 1.6 for the first time, Americans reported wanting families comprised of an average of 2.7 children — a desire that has remained effectively unchanged since the 1970s.“This suggests that the decline in births may be driven more by practical challenges that make it harder for people to have as many children as they want, rather than by changing attitudes about the ideal family size,” read an accompanying report.Cardus released its latest poll on Canadian fertility in the same month that they published a similar report focused on birth rates in Quebec, with the latter focusing more on the cultural consequences of “denatalisation.”The French report titled, “A Quebec without children,” which used survey data from Leger, found that a majority of Quebecers anticipated a future of cultural and linguistic loss as a result of demographics in which deaths were outnumbering births.“It would be false to claim that Quebecers are happy with the current situation or … that it is the project of their individual family planning decisions,” the report said in French.Rather “a mounting series of economic and social obstacles” were “stopping Quebecers from having the number of children they would desire, at the moment they want them.”Earlier this month, Conservative MP Dean Allison announced that he would be chairing an inquiry into one of the more untouchable issues on Parliament Hill right now; the Canadians injured by an adverse reaction to a COVID-19 vaccine.With the mandate to “listen to Canadians,” the effort has been given the stripped down title of the Allison Inquiry.Conservative MP Jamil Jivani was less diplomatic in the name of a new parliamentary task force he announced Friday. Jivani will be chairing the Parliamentary Task Force to End Liberal Racism, a probe into government-mandated racial quotas and race-based hiring practices.It’s a phenomenon that this newsletter has covered often, with the Liberals indeed overseeing policies that have imposed race-based metrics on everything from bail courts to military recruitment to grant eligibility.Anyway, Jivani’s Task Force to End Liberal Racism begins Sept. 22.First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here. Get the latest from Tristin Hopper straight to your inbox Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.