Canada's Adults Without Children Are Making History

One scary bridge and a claustrophobia-inducing tunnel allow people living in the Detroit area

to explore another country as easily as their own state of Michigan. I lived there for five years,

and weekends might find my friends and me in Windsor, Ontario, about half-hour drive away.

Give us more time and we’d head for Toronto, or maybe London.

Oh Canada, that’s where my explorations stopped, but I’ve been determined to go back and see more ofAmerica’s northern neighbor for years. Now, thanks to

The NotMom Summit, I have friends to visit from Vancouver to Montreal, and apparently, there are many more Canadian NotMoms to meet. In August 2017, Statistics Canada announced census data revealing the country’s highest proportion of single-person households ever recorded: 28.2 per cent of the 14.1 million households nationwide. Of course, older citizens with adult children make up some of those stats, but the rise in non-parents is getting much of the credit. University of Calgary sociology professor Pallavi Banerjee told the

Calgary Herald, “Women now have the vocabulary to say that they would like to remain childfree with out being socially ostracized, and there are more and more male partners on board.”

The Edmonton Journal reports that childless couples in Canada “grew in number at a faster rate over the last five years than couples with at least one child.”

Bottom line: almost 13.9 percent of the adult population lives alone. In 1951, that figure was just 1.8 per cent. The new census report included information on same sex couples --a full one per cent of the population – and other demographics that led

Montreal Gazette writer Alison Hanes to reach this conclusion about her homeland:

“We are as diverse in background as we are in lifestyle. We are more alone, but still reliant on each other.”

I think I really like Canada.