Marriage less popular, data suggests

MONTREAL — In a 37-year relationship that has seen them have three children together, Helene Gauvin and her partner, Andre Jauvin, have never formally tied the knot.

While they’ve talked about getting married from time to time, they’ve always decided they’re too busy or would rather spend their money on a great vacation.

“Emotionally, I don’t need it. Legally neither,” Gauvin, 58, said in an interview.

New numbers on families, households and marital status from the 2016 census to be released Wednesday by Statistics Canada will likely show more and more couples are reaching similar conclusions and seeing no reason to tie the knot.

According to Nora Spinks of the Vanier Institute of the Family, the decline is largely because the factors that traditionally pushed couples to marry are less present.

Those factors included traditional religious beliefs, a societal disapproval of sex outside marriage, and financial necessity, all of which have eroded over time.

Furthermore, many adults now in their late 20s and early 30s experienced their own parents’ separations when divorce rates were high in the 1980s and ’90s, Spinks says.

But this doesn’t mean they aren’t committing to each other, she says.

“We should not confuse those numbers to mean people are not forming long-term, committed relationships,” she says.

Couples who do want to marry are choosing to do so at an older age. Data released last month revealed the average age of a first marriage in Quebec in 2016 was 33.4 years for a man and 31.9 for a woman — a rise of 7.8 years for men and 8.5 for women since 1971.

Across Canada, the proportion of adults aged 25 to 29 who were never married has been steadily rising.