This booklet distinguishes paid activity in the labour force from the unpaid tasks of the home and the community. Each kind of family has a different economic context, with its own financial demands and pressures. Families are not static. Individually, they go through difficult and stressful changes both with respect to family functions and paid employment. Family members get new jobs, buy houses, have children, care for and eventually deal with the death of parents, retire and grow old themselves.
Families change in composition and function to respond to social and economic pressures.
If you are one of roughly half of Canada's families today, you have children. Your spending priorities are different from those of childless couples, and your household expenses are greater. Most likely, yours is a dual-earner family for the compelling reason that this is the only way most Canadians can meet all their financial responsibilities. Workers are also Members of Families People are employees, but they are also individuals and family members. They have serious concerns in the larger part of their lives that are spent away from their jobs.