More about families with children

In last month’s issue in our story Births down, but don’t despair, we discussed the declining birth rate and some trends that might offset less overall entertainment spending by families with children due to the decreasing number of children. Here’s some more information about trends of families with children.

Families with preschoolers on the decline
The number of families with preschool children is on a decline. In 2013, there were 8% fewer (1.26 million) families with children age 5 and younger since the number peaked in 2007.

Stay-at-home mothers
As we discussed last month, the percentage of married-couple families with preschoolers (age 5 or younger) with full-time stay-at-home mothers is on the increase after decreasing for a number of years. However, there appears that a downward trend for full-time stay-at-home mothers in families with older children could be beginning.

Here’s a breakdown by family type for stay-at-home mothers with preschoolers.

At-home mothers
Besides mothers who stay at home full time, there are also mothers who work part time, so they are home with their children part of the weekday. Here’s a graph that shows the percentage of non-working plus part time working mothers by the age of their children. In 2013, over half of married couple families had an at-home mother.

What all this means is that it takes very precise analysis of the market area for any project targeting children, especially younger children, to determine whether location-based entertainment or enrichment spending on children will be increasing or decreasing in the future.