Infant Care. Infant care is most often the responsibility of the female partner in a family and is most often a private matter. As more mothers of small children enter the labor market, some professional infant care is available, though this is unevenly distributed nationally and is most often found in urban settings. Siblings may play a role in infant care, but there is no general expectation of this.
Young children are expected to be quiet in public, and mothers will take steps necessary to keep their infant children calm in public settings. Breastfeeding, though not prohibited, is rare in public, although feeding in other forms is common.
Child Rearing and Education. Child rearing is under the control of the natal family during the first several years of a child's life. While some monitoring of the treatment of very young children is done by the state, through child welfare organizations, for the most part children are cared for by their parents until the age of four or five, and parents have almost total control over how their children are cared for. Most child care responsibilities are carried out by the mother, in families with two resident parents of the opposite sex. In same sex parent families, child rearing responsibility is most likely to be shared by the two parents, and an increasing, though still very small number of opposite sex parent families are adopting this practice. However, the overwhelming majority of single parent headed households are headed by women, which reflects the key role women are expected to play in child rearing. While experts in childhood development have been active in promoting such things as early childhood education, the fact the majority of single parent female headed households with children have incomes at or below the poverty level suggests that the rearing and care of very young children is not considered socially important work by many Canadians.
Children are expected to be quiet, well-behaved, and relatively docile and are taught to show respect and deference to authority and to be obedient and submissive. Girls and boys are socialized into conventional gender roles early, through differences in dress and through limitations or direct instruction in appropriate play activities. Young children are, for the most part, excluded from important ceremonial activities such as church attendance. Their presence at public functions is considered to be at least potentially disruptive, and they are usually excluded. There has also been an increase in the number of child-free apartments, condominiums, and even housing developments in some suburban areas.
Children are required by law to attend school, or to be instructed at home under government guidelines, from the age of six to sixteen. In the 1980s and 1990s, the age at which children first attend school dropped, in some areas, to as young as four. This reflects the increase in two income households in Canada, which also lead to growth in professional daycare services for very young children. State funding of this early child care, however, was cut substantially in the final years of the 1990s making pre-school child care outside the home almost entirely the financial responsibility of parents.
In general, early childhood is a period of relative helplessness for the child, and during this period children are expected to be irresponsible and troublesome. Most of the effort of child rearing during this period is directed at controlling children's behavior and teaching the appropriate social roles. Corporal punishment, though allowed in Canada, is subject to criminal prosecution if it is excessive. Children under the age of twelve cannot be charged with criminal offenses, although their parents may be held financially responsible for their misdeeds. There has been some political lobbying to either lower that age to as low as six or, alternatively, to increase it to sixteen or eighteen. Once children enter school, child rearing becomes politically and socially complex, as state interests often come into conflict with the values and interests of parents, or with the concerns of communities as a whole. With increasing ethnic diversity, the potential for conflicts expands. Such issues as arranged marriage, male and female circumcision and other genital modification, and religious schooling are just three areas of child rearing and parental control producing substantial concern and debate in Canada.
Canada has the highest per capita level of postsecondary education participation of any industrialized country. All of its universities are publicly funded institutions, although students do pay tuition fees. National and provincial support programs are in place to assist students in postsecondary education.
The ethnic diversity of Canada means that rules of social propriety are quite complex. There are certain general expectations. Greeting, except in formal settings, does not require touching in the form of embraces or handshakes. Behavior in public should be subdued. Rowdiness and loud speech, for example, are considered inappropriate except under special circumstances or in places such as bars or other venues. As a community, Canadians are in general soft spoken, patient, and almost apologetic in their public behavior. They are also in general tolerant of the complex network of cultural differences in public behavior, more so in cities perhaps, where such diversity is more common place.
Religious affiliation is more prevalent than religious observance, though this varies by ethnic and religious group. Most Canadians claim some religious affiliation, most often Christian, although between the 1981 and 1991 census periods, the number of people claiming no religious affiliation has almost doubled from about 1.7 million to a little under 3.4 million. Nevertheless, there are significant practitioners of all the major world religions in Canada. Officially, Canada is a Christian nation, with respect for the Christian God enshrined in statute. Swearing on the Bible, for example, is part of most legal proceedings, though nonsecular alternatives are also practiced. Prayers open many official functions.
Personal religious observance has declined in the last several decades, a phenomenon similar to that found in most industrialized countries. This appears to be mostly a Christian phenomenon. Often new Canadians will make special efforts to maintain their religious observances as part of the process of retaining their original ethnic or cultural identity. Some religious groups have grown in membership, such as those associated with evangelical Christianity, but overall the trend in Canada has been toward increasing secularism in public and in private lives. An exception is the increase in the observance of traditional religious practices among First Nations peoples in recent decades, which should be seen both as a spiritual revitalization and as part of the historic process of reasserting their ethnic and political identities in Canada.
Most religious officials are associated with the mainstream world religions, although there are some ethnic differences. For example, specialist religious practitioners such as healers are common in Portuguese communities such as the one in Toronto. With changes in migration patterns, important religious practitioners associated with non-world religions, such as local religious traditions found among different people from Africa, are becoming common. Excepting
A group of children play hockey on the snow in Cape Dorset, Northwest Territories. Hockey, considered to be Canada's national sport, is popular across the nation.
those religious practitioners who function for political bodies, such as the chaplain of the federal parliament, religious practitioners in general have authority in, and serve the needs of, only their own locally defined communities.
One exception is the increasing importance of First Nations spiritual leaders, who also serve as political leaders in their communities. These practitioners are often directly involved in negotiations with the wider Canadian community, and their spiritual and political roles are indivisible.
Rituals and Holy Places. There is too much religious diversity throughout Canada to make any general observations on rituals and sacred sites. Churches of many types are important locales in almost all communities, not only to practitioners of the particular religion, but also as community centers and bases of operation in community emergencies. In both large and small communities, churches are often the site of community activism and the provision of community services, such as shelter for homeless people. While religion might be said to play less and less of a role in the cultural life of Canada, religious institutions and practitioners play significant roles in nonspiritual aspects of community life.
The majority of Canadians believe in the Christian model of the afterlife, of heaven and of hell. Burial practices vary by religious group, but for the most part funeral and burial observances are the responsibility of the deceased's family. Funerals are both private functions, attended by family and friends, and public, as in the funeral procession from a church to a burial site. The funerals of important political or cultural figures may be televised.
