2.3  The New Zealand family from 1946

The post-World War II history of the New Zealand family can be divided into two phases: the baby boom, lasting from the 1940s to the 1970s, and baby bust, from the 1980s to the present. Section 2.3.1 examines some of the changes involved in the move from baby boom to bust, first setting out some of the quantitative data, and then raising some points of interpretation. Section 2.3.2 discusses changes in family structure, and Section 2.3.3 uses data from the 1998-9 New Zealand Time Use Survey to examine the division of labour between genders.

2.3.1  The baby boom and after

A summary of some major demographic and social trends during and after the boom is given in Table 1. The remainder of this section will present data on these trends. Where possible, separate estimates will be presented for Maori and non-Maori.

Table 1 – Marriage, fertility, and labour force participation during the baby boom and after

	Baby boom (1940s to 1970s)	After the baby boom (1980s to present)
Marriage
Age	Early	Late
Proportions marrying	High	Moderate
Legal vs de facto	Almost all legal	Significant de facto
Divorce	Low	Moderate
Fertility
Age	Early	Late
Level	High	Low
Marital status of mother	Almost all married	Significant unmarried
Labour force participation
Female	Low	Moderate
Male	High	High

Figure 3 shows that the median age at which men and women entered their first marriages declined by several years over the two decades following World War II. By the late 1960s it had fallen to 21 years for females and 23 years for males. These ages are extremely low for a predominately European population. From the mid-1970s, however, the median ages had begun to climb.

Figure 3 – Median age at first marriage, 1935-2000

Source: Statistics New Zealand (2001b: Table 3.05)

At the same time as the median age of those who did marry was rising, a growing proportion of New Zealanders were not marrying at all. This is apparent from the data on proportions legally married shown in Figure 4. The figure also gives estimate for the proportion of people in de facto marriages. De facto marriages became more common between 1981 and 2001. The increase in de facto marriages was not been sufficient, however, to offset the decrease in legal marriages, so that the proportion of people in either de facto or legal marriages fell.

Figure 4 – Percent of population in legal and de facto marriages, 1981 and 2002

Note: The figure shows estimates for the combined male and female population

Source: Calculated from 1981 Census data presented in Statistics New Zealand (Statistics New Zealand No date: Tables 14, 15) and 2001 Census data from Statistics New Zealand’s online database (http://xtabs.stats.govt.nz/eng/TableViewer/wdsview/dispviewp.asp)

Legal marriage is now less common among Maori than among non-Maori, as can be seen in Figure 5. The estimates for people aged 60 and over are, however, an exception. Maori in this age group—who would have been entering the main marriage ages during the baby boom—appear to have just as high a probability of ever marrying as other New Zealanders of the same age. Maori in earlier periods had not seen any great need to ask non-Maori officials to provide legal sanction for their marriages (Pool 1991: 109) so the baby boom may well have been the high water mark for legal marriage among Maori.

Figure 5 – Percent of age group who have ever been legally married, 2001

Source: Calculated from 2001 Census data, available from Statistics New Zealand website.

Across the whole population, legal marriages have become somewhat less enduring over recent decades (comparable data is not available for de facto marriages). Figure 6 gives estimates of the proportion of marriages dissolved within 5 years, 10 years, and 20 years. The figure shows, for instance, that a couple marrying in 1967 had only a 2% chance of divorcing one another within 5 years, an 8% chance of divorcing within 10 years, and a 21% chance of divorcing within 20 years. Couples marrying in later years have experienced steadily higher probabilities of dissolving their marriages within the durations given.

Baby boom marriages were not just early but also fertile. As Figure 7 shows, fertility was higher in 1960 than at any time during the twentieth century. The fertility indicator shown in Figure 7 is the “total fertility rate”. This is the sum of the age-specific fertility rates for the year; it can be interpreted as the average number of children a woman would bear over her lifetime if prevailing fertility rates were to obtain indefinitely. Fertility rates for the whole population declined rapidly after 1960; rates for the Maori population declined precipitously.

Figure 6 – Cumulative percentage of marriages dissolved within the indicated period

Source: Source: Statistics New Zealand (2001b: Table 3.11)