Canada

The addition of a child has an enormous impact on any family. Family dynamics and relations are often altered to accommodate the new member. Typically, a woman's dependence on her partner's earnings, and thereby her vulnerability within the family, increases with the presence of young children and relative to the number of children. This pattern is similar—indeed, deeply entrenched— across Western industrial countries, and continues even in the face of active social policies to minimize their effects (Bianchi, Casper, and Peltola 1999). From this standpoint, fertility and fertility decline play important roles in changing gender relations and family life, in Canada and elsewhere.