More families with parent(s) over 50

More children living at home have older parents. Nearly one in three parents with children living at home were in their fifties in 2010. The total number has increased since 1995 by 168 thousand to 795 thousand in 2010.

More and more older parents

The average age of parents with children living at home has risen over the past 15 years. The proportion of families where one of the parents is 50 years or older has grown from 25 percent in 1995 to more than 30 percent in 2010. In 1995, nearly four in ten parents were under the age of 40 versus three in ten today.

The increase in the number of families with older parents is partly due to the trend to postpone parenthood and the fact that more young return to their parents after having lived away from home for a while.

Families by age of the parent

Fewer large families

There are more than 2.5 million families with children living at home. More than four in ten families have two children living at home. The proportion of families with one child living at home is marginally lower. With 17 percent, large families with three or more children constitute a minority. Last year, there were 18 thousand families with five or six children living under the same roof and 2.5 thousand families with seven or more children at home versus 25 thousand and more than 5 thousand respectively in the mid-1990s.

Number of large families

Proportion of families with children in decline

The number of families with children living at home has been more or less stable over the past decade, but the proportion of families has declined dramatically in the past ten years from 50 percent in 1981 to 34 percent in 2010. The total number of households has risen by 45 percent since 1981 to 7.4 million. The increase is mainly due to a sharp increase in the number of singles.

Percentage of families with children in all households

Arie de Graaf