International day of families

Results of the World Values Survey conducted in Slovenia in 2011 in the scope of the Slovenian Public Opinion Survey showed that 89% of the adult population in Slovenia consider family as the most important value in their life. The Family Code adopted in 2017 defines a family as a community consisting of a child younger than 18 years and both parents or one parent or another adult if such adult cares for the child. In addition, the Dictionary of the Slovenian Standard Language (SSKJ) deems children as the key element of explaining the term family. However, the SSKJ understands a family also in a broader sense as a group of persons connected together as relatives. Therefore, a family member could be considered someone not living together but somewhere else in Slovenia or even abroad. Such understanding of a family differs completely from the statistical definition of a family based on international recommendations for population censuses, which demand common address, dwelling and household. A family then is defined in the narrow sense based on the relation between household members. A (statistical) family is comprised of two persons of the same generation related as spouses/cohabitants with or without children or a lone parent with children regardless of the children’s age.

Eight out of ten persons live in families

According to the 2018 Register-based Census, there were 577,544 families in Slovenia with almost 1.68 million members (81% of total population), of whom 300,000 spouses/cohabitants without children, 709,000 parents with children and 668,000 children. Most of the population (800,000) lived in married couple with children families, followed by lone mother families (280,000). The youngest parents were 15 years old, while the oldest children were more than 80 years old (all children aged 72 years or more lived in lone parent families, except two children all others with lone mothers). Age is the key factor having impact on the family status of individuals. By increasing age, also the share of persons living in the families without children is increasing (mostly because their children already established their own families). The share of lone parents is very similar in all ages from 30–74 years but at age 75 and higher the share is almost doubled (the primary reason is the death of the spouse). For the same reason by ageing of parents, the ratio between the shares of children in married couple or consensual union families, compared to lone parent families, is changing.

Widowed mother is the most common non-family member in family households

In addition to 131,500 family members in so-called extended family households, there are also relatives (32,500) and non-relatives (11,600) living together. The most common extended family households consist of married couple with children and one of the parents, usually the mother or the mother-in-law. Parents represent 75% of all relatives without being members of the (statistical) family in such households. As a rule, single siblings are the second largest group (9%), followed by grandchildren (6%). Other relatives (grandparent, nephew, son- or daughter-in-law, uncle/aunt, etc.) contribute to a diverse composition of households with almost 300 combinations.

A special type of households is non-family households with 37,000 members. Just over half of members were without relative ties. The most common relatives in this type of household were siblings (10,000) living without any parent. 87% of them were single (never married). 4,000 persons lived as a grandparent and grandchild(ren).

Not taking into account one-person households (270,000 persons) and members of institutional households (39,000), we can conclude that as of 1 January 2018 98.2% of the population of Slovenia lived with at least one relative in the same household.

303,000 persons live in multi-generational households

Multi-generational households consist of at least three generations with the average of more than five members, which is twice as many as average household size (2.46 members). In 2018, we recorded for the first time households with five generations (3 in total). 90% of multi-generational household members live in a family. In 60% of multi-generational households, there are at least two (statistical) families. We also recorded five households with five or more families.

The number of reconstituted families is increasing

In 2011, when we for the first time derived data on reconstituted families (i.e. two-parent families with at least one child who is not a biological child of both spouses/cohabitants), there were 11,500 (4.0%) such families of all two-parent families. In the 2018 Register-based Census we recorded 14,600 (5.2%) reconstituted families out of 281,300 two-parent families. There are relatively three times more reconstituted families among unmarried partners (10.7%) than among married couples (3.6%). The average number of children in reconstituted families was larger (1.96) than in all two-parent families with children (1.67). 28,584 children lived in reconstituted families, of whom 38% were common children, 53% were children of the mother only and 9% were children of the father only. Non-common children, i.e. biological children of one of the parents, were on average almost 22 years old, i.e. twice as old as common children were (11 years). In reconstituted families with at least one common child aged 0–4 years the mean age of all common children was 3 and a half years, while the mean age of non-common children was 12 years and 9 months.