Listening to parents

If you’re a new parent reading this, we know you’re already intimately familiar with what it means to be one—because you’ve been there, time and time again.

You likely know what it’s like to be up for a middle-of-the-night feeding. Perhaps you’ve sat waiting in your local hospital’s emergency department for a doctor to see your sick baby. You also know what it’s like to feel all of the range of emotions that come with these and other parental experiences, as you navigate this life change.

And to help us better understand what it means to be a new parent, we’d like to hear from you in the next few weeks, if you’ve been chosen to participate in a new survey!

Statistics Canada is currently conducting the Parental Experiences Survey (PES), which aims to provide a more comprehensive picture of new parents and their infants. Data collection began last October and will continue until January 31, 2025.

Your input matters 

Information from your experiences, knowledge and behaviours can help monitor, plan, and implement programs to inform national recommendations for maternal and newborn care, as well as efforts to improve the mental health and well-being of parents and families across Canada.

Your responses are confidential, and your privacy is our priority. For more information about how we collect personal information, visit the Information for Survey Participants and Trust Centre pages.

A need for new data

It’s been more than two years since we last conducted a survey on maternal experiences, and there have been multiple-year gaps between older surveys. Here are some key data points:

• In 2022, more than one-third of women aged 18 to 34 years (34.2%) and 35 to 49 years (38.9%) said they exclusively breastfed or gave only breast milk to their child in the first six months.
• Over 9 in 10 women (91%) who had a baby over the previous five years told us in 2017 and 2018 that they breastfed or gave breast milk to their child, even for a short time, soon after giving birth.
• In 2019, almost one in four mothers (23%) reported feelings consistent with post-partum depression or anxiety disorder.
• There were more than 351,400 live births in Canada in 2023, as well as an estimated 1.9 million children aged 0 to 4 years living in Canada as of July 1, 2024.

Data collected from the new PES will be critical to filling the knowledge gap from previous surveys, and helping to better support all those new parents out there.