article from West Australian newspaperOur Country - YOU Have the right to leave After Sydney not wanting to offend by not putting up Xmas lights. After hearing that the state of South Australia changed its opinion and...
Some of the claims included:
a.. Couples with children now make up fewer than half of all families. b.. A 21 percent jump in the number of one-parent families. c.. A 17 percent rise in the number of couples without children. d.. A 26.7 percent rise in single-person households. Such statistics seem to ring out the rest knell for the traditional family - until one looks at the fine print.
1. Deliberate exclusions When calculating "couples with children" the fine print defined children as "dependant, under 15." So families with children over the age of 15, were not included. Equally, the ageing population means that on average, traditional families are (in the short term) evolving into parents at home with children moving out (to marry or share with others of same age). What we are probably looking at in this slight decrease in traditional families, will be redressed when the next wave start having children. Either way, the drop in traditional families (with children) is meagre - from 53.7 percent to 49.6 percent (not 40.6 percent as the SMH reported!).
2. The divorce factor It is interesting that the 21 percent rise in single parent families is almost exactly matched by a 26.7 percent rise in lone-person households. The rising divorce rate could well explain this as a traditional family splits into one parent with children and one parent alone. This is not something to celebrate (as the press coverage seems to be). From a statistical point of view, the fact that both the lone parent stats and the lone-person household stats, start from a low base, makes any increase seem significant. For example, if you have a particular population of 2 people, a singular addition (to 3) means a 50 percent increase! Consequently, a small base population tends to give unrealistically large increase percentages. For this reason increases should be given as a percentage of the whole population. When this is done for lone-parent households the resultant rise is a much more sobering 1.7 percent: from 12.8 percent (1991) to 14.5 percent (1996). This puts into perspective the media's consistently quoted and more sensational 21 percent "jump". Similarly with lone person households, the rise as a percentage of the whole population is a mere 2.8 percent over 5 years - from 19.3 percent to 22.1 percent.
These are hardly the sorts of increases which justify headlines declaring us as "a nation of loners"!
Equally, the quoted 17 percent rise in the number of couples without children, becomes a decidedly skinny 2.5 percent rise when taken as part of the entire population. The media has typically sought to exaggerate the impact of non-traditional household arrangements at the expense of the high percentage of traditional families in the community.
3. "I Disease" The articles in both the Australian and the Herald had as their central thrust, a desire to promote living alone. Both articles featured large photos of a selected "loner" and extended quotes from them. Just how desirable is it to have a society consisting of a large proportion of people who choose to live alone? Perhaps the answer lies in an analysis of the quotes from these individuals. The Herald's selected individual was quoted in 10 sentences. In those 10 sentences, the first person pronouns (I, me, my, myself) featured a total of 24 times! The Australian's example gave just 3 sentences of quotes but mentioned "me, myself and I" a total of 7 times.
Just how beneficial to society is it to encourage the growth of a sector which is so self-absorbed?!
This is not to say that every person who chooses to live alone is selfish. However there is much to be said for iron sharpening iron - "It is not good for man to be alone". The Herald stated the obvious when it quoted a Ms Rille Walshe, director of the Australian Council of Social Services saying that the result of a rise in single-person households "is likely to be an increase in loneliness".
And now the punchline These articles went to great lengths to give the impression that "family life is on the wane" that "social trends...are chipping away at the dominance of the traditional nuclear family" and that there was a discernible "rising number of single-person households". However, families (of all types) still account for 70.6 percent of the population - an insignificant drop of 1.1 percent since 1991, while average household numbers moved from 2.8 people per home to 2.7 per home - hardly a statistically noticeable trend at all.
Despite reports to the contrary, news of the traditional family's rest, is grossly exaggerated.
1.. Sydney Morning Herald April 21st 1998, page 2 2.. Australian April 21st 1998, page 6
