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The Life Cycle of French-Canadian Urban Families*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Maurice Lamontagne  and
J.-C. Falardeau
Maurice Lamontagne
Affiliation:
Laval University
J.-C. Falardeau
Affiliation:
Laval University
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Extract

The literature of scientific studies, either demographic, economic, or sociological, on Canadian families, is rather thin. Except for some valuable local monographs and theses interred in university libraries, one must rely almost exclusively on excellent but very few general studies of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Among such are the 1931 Census monograph on the Canadian family, the 1937-8 national survey on the Canadian family income and expenditure pattern and, more recently, the remarkable series of studies by Dr. Enid Charles on the trends and differences in Canadian family size as revealed by the last Census of 1941.

The French-speaking part of Canada geographically concentrated in the Province of Quebec represents, within the Canadian context, a culturally and politically conscious social structure. At present, this society, owing to rapid industrialization and concomitant adjustments, includes areas and communities of all the possible transitional shades from the solid, old-settled, rural type, to the more complex, dynamic, and urbanized variety. Studies of French-Canadian families in any of these differentiated areas are also scarce. The traditional type of French-Canadian rural family has been ably studied by the Canadian sociologist follower of the Le Play School of Social Science, Léon Gérin, especially in his monograph entitled the Habitant de Saint-Justin. More recently, Horace Miner scientifically analysed for the first time, the relationships between land and the family in rural Quebec. Both of these studies stress the following basic features of the traditional rural French-Canadian family: a high degree of familism and of internal solidarity, a fundamental functional relationship with the tenure system of large family-ownership of the farm as well as with a peculiar pattern of land inheritance which consists in the passing of the whole farm, undivided, to only one inheriting son in each family.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , May 1947 , pp. 233 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1947

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Footnotes

*

This paper was read to the section on “Family” of the American Sociological Society at its annual meeting in Chicago, December, 1946.

References

1 The Canadian Family, Census monograph no. 7. Reprinted from vol. XIII, Seventh Census of Canada, 1931 (Ottawa, 1938).Google Scholar

2 Family Income and Expenditure in Canada 1937-1938: A Study of Urban Wage-Earner Families, Including Data on Physical Attributes (Ottawa, 1941).Google Scholar

3 Charles, Enid, Trendsin Canadian Family Size, Canada 1941, Bulletin no. F-l (Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa, 1944)Google Scholar; Charles, Enid, Cultural Differences in Family Size, Canada 1941, Bulletin no. F-2 (Ottawa, 1945)Google Scholar; Charles, Enid, Occupational Differences in Fertility, Canada 1941, Bulletin ne. F-3 (Ottawa, 1945)Google Scholar; Charles, Enid, Economic Differences in Family Size, Canada 1941, Bulletin no. F-5 (Ottawa, 1946).Google Scholar

4 Gérin, Léon, “L'Habitant de Saint-Justin, Contribution à la Géographie Sociale du Canada” (Mémoires de la Société Royale du Canada, 2nd series, vol. IV, 1898, sec. I, pp. 139–216).Google Scholar

5 Miner, Horace, Saint-Denis, a French-Canadian Parish (Chicago, 1937).Google Scholar

6 Charles, , Trendsin Canadian Family Size, Table II, p. 10.Google Scholar

7 Charles, , Cultural Differences in Family Size, p. 13.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 53.

9 Charles, , Trends in Canadian Family Size, Table II, p. 73.Google Scholar

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid., p. 19.

12 Charles, , Cultural Differences in Family Size, pp. 52–3.Google Scholar

13 For a discussion of the use and value of the cross-section method see P. Loomis, C., “The Study of the Life Cycle of Families” (Rural Sociology, vol. I, no. 2, 06, 1936, pp. 192–8).Google Scholar

14 Woytinsky, W. S., “Income Cycle in the Life of Families and Individuals” (Social Security Bulletin, Federal Security Agency, Social Security Board, Washington, D.C., vol. VI, no. 6, 06, 1943, pp. 8–17).Google Scholar

15 The actual total number of “households” in Quebec City in 1941 was 26,844.

16 Zimmerman, Carle C. and Frampton, M. E., Family and Society (New York, 1937), pp. 59–60 Google Scholar; Woytinsky, , “Income Cycle in the Life of Families and Individuals,” p. 11.Google Scholar

17 Among the various weighting formulas used to convert family members into adult units, the following coefficient was used: the first two members of the family were counted as one unit each and additional members were counted according to a scale which increased with the age of the head of the family. Thus, each additional family member was counted as 0.4 of a consumer unit when the head was 20-24; as 0.5 when the head was 25-29; as 0.6 when the head was 30-34; as 0.7 when 35-39, and so on. This procedure was chosen after having been found to conform to the scale of children needs in Quebec City families as revealed by the findings of a local survey on the cost of living. Cf. Le Budget Familial à Québec, Etude Préparée en Collaboration par un Groupe d'Auxiliaires Sociaux de Laval (Quebec, 12, 1945).Google Scholar

18 Rowntree, B. Seebohm, Poverty: A Study of Town Life (London, 1901), pp. 136–7.Google Scholar

19 Woytinsky, , “Income Cycle in the Life of Families and Individuals,” pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., p. 12.

21 Saint-Denis, a French-Canadian Parish, p. 82.

22 Ibid.

23 Hughes, Everett-C., Programme de Recherches Sociales pour le Québec (Cahiers de la Faculté des Sciences Sociales, Laval University, Quebec, 1943), vol. II, no. 4, p. 21.Google Scholar