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Of the 75,890 cohabiting couples who had at least one joint child under 18 living at home, 51.4 per cent were one-child families, 38 per cent had two children and 10.6 per cent had at least three children. In families with children under 18 living at home, the cohabiting parents are consistently much younger than married parents. Of the cohabiting mothers, three out of four are under the age of 35, compared to one out of three married mothers. Altogether there were 2,032,518 families without and with children (no age limit) in Norway on 1 January 1996. In statistics on families, a single person is regarded as a family. There were 13,000 more families compared to 1995. The number of families consisting of married couples with children living at home and fathers with children living at home declined slightly. All other types of families increased. The average size of families was 2.14 persons.
The number of families with children increased by nearly 3,200 from 1995 to 1996 in Norway. On 1 January this year there were 568,263 families with children under the age of 18 living at home. Of the families with children, 65.1 per cent were married couples, 13.4 per cent cohabiting couples with joint children, 19.2 per cent mothers with children and 2.3 per cent fathers with children. The statistics do not show how many single parents with children live with someone who is not the father or mother of the children.
Weekly Bulletin issue no. 47 1996