Canada

Circle Of Friends Dept: And when her husband s job kept him absent for nine of the first 12 months of Ella s life, that really cemented it for me, she said. Could I do it with throwing another baby in the mix? The answer to that was definitely, No way, Jose. The Solomons two-kid family is typical among their circle of friends in Ottawa. Indeed, couples with just one or two children have become the norm in Canada, part of a trend of steadily dwindling family size that has been going on since the early 1960s, according to Globe and Mail. Canada s birth rate is currently hovering around 1.67 children per woman, well below the minimum of 2.0 needed for natural population replacement. We knew with Ryan s naval career that there were going to be a lot of periods of time when I would be by myself, said Ms. Solomon, the 39-year-old stay-at-home mother of Aidan, 9, and Ella, 6. They re not alone, according to population projections Statistics Canada released Wednesday as part of the first release of data from the 2011 census. On its current trajectory, the numbers suggest, Canada s growth rate could be almost entirely dependent on immigration within 50 years. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.