A new kind of clan is being born
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The nuclear family by numbers:
- At the last count, the average number of children per family here is 1.4 -- compared to 2.2 in 1986 and just under four in the late Seventies.
- Almost 500,000 people in Ireland belong to one-parent families -- an increase of 35,500 since 2002. Just 14pc of single-parent families are headed by the dad.
- One in five Irish couples now chooses civil ceremony over a church wedding.
- Birth rates here are at their highest since the Seventies at over 65,000 a year.
- A third of babies born last year were born outside marriage. However, records show that almost 20pc of all births were to unmarried parents with the same address.
- At the last census, the highest percentage of births outside marriage was noted in Limerick city, while the lowest was in Galway.
- The fastest growing family unit is cohabiting couples -- 12pc of the country is now co-habitating.
- The change in Irish families is most evident in Dublin where less than one in five households consists of the traditional family unit of a married mum, dad and children.
- The average age of women giving birth has risen to its highest at 31.2 years of age -- in comparison to 28.8 in 1980 and 25 in the early seventies.
- Before 1957, only 49 never-married women had babies in the Rotunda.
Based on latest CSO figures and recent surveys
Irish Independent
