Surprise! We’re more conservative than Americans

Despite our cherished liberal Canadian values, our behaviour in family matters is a good deal more conservative than that of Americans. Our marriage rates are higher and our divorce rates are lower. Twenty-seven per cent of American children live in single-parent families. And the number of children born to unmarried mothers – especially to women in their 20s – is soaring. In 2010, 40.8 per cent of births in the U.S. were to unmarried women. That rate is growing fastest among the white lower-middle class – the very people who tend to vote Republican and loudly thump the tub for traditional family values.