Number of children living with one parent raises with age

Eighty-nine per cent of children aged under three live in families with two parents, according to Statistics Finland's family statistics 2017.

In ten years, the share has gone down by two percentage points, while the share of children living in one-parent families in turn has grown by two percentage points.

Of all babies aged under one, 91 per cent live with two parents and nine per cent with their mother only.

The share of children living with one parent increases with age. In 2017, one-fifth of children aged 17 lived with the mother only, a good decade ago the share was 19 per cent. Respectively, five per cent lived with the father only, which is one percentage point more than ten years earlier.

Every tenth child lives permanently in a reconstituted family, i.e. a family where at least one child aged under 18 is the child of one of the spouses only. Of these children in reconstituted families, 59 per cent are the mother's children, every tenth is the father's child and close on one-third are the spouses common children.

Seven per cent of all children are actual children of reconstituted families, that is, children who have obtained a new social parent. The spouses are of the opposite sex in reconstituted families.