More than 340,000 children in Canada are growing up in mixed-race families, a new report from Statistics Canada reveals, and the number of mixed unions is increasing much more quickly than that of other partnerships.
Growing numbers of mixed ethnocultural unions and international adoption mean five per cent of children in two-parent families in Canada now live in diverse households, said Anne Milan, senior analyst and co-author of the report, released yesterday.
"There's close to 294,000 children that have mixed-union parents," she said. "And if you look at a mixed-family concept where at least one person in the family - not necessarily the parents - is a visible minority and at least one is not, or there's two different visible minorities, it's over 340,000 children that are in that kind of a mixed-family situation."