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Family blending shows the make-up of couple families with children. It sorts these families into seven groups. The groups are based on whose children live in the family. Same-sex couples are included throughout. The split into intact, step, and blended is mechanical — based on past and current relationships in the ABS data — and is not a judgement about how the family sees itself.
The figures come from Census data. The Australian Bureau of Statistics collects them.
This page counts only couple families with children. Lone-parent families are not in these figures — see the Household type page, where they appear under One parent families. Couples without children, group households, and lone-person households are also not here — they live on the Household type page too. The total on this page is smaller than the total on Household type.
Kinship and extended-family living can sit awkwardly inside these seven groups. ABS classifies whichever family it identifies as the household's primary family; multi-generation living, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander household structures, and CALD households are split across the seven groups in ways that may not match how those households see themselves.
The key cut is whose children are in the family.
The ABS adds a second cut. It asks if other children are in the home. Other children means children of one of the partners that ABS records, from outside the current couple. So most groups appear twice on the page. One row is for no other children present. The other row is for other children present. For most areas the no other children row is the larger of the two.
The Census records what the family reported on Census night. Children means adopted, foster, or children of either partner that ABS records.
The total counts couple families with children in occupied private dwellings. It does not count empty homes. It does not count hotels, aged-care homes, hostels, or shared housing. A home can hold more than one family. Only the couple-with-children families in it are counted here.
Place Forecast stores family blending at the mesh block level. The ABS Census publishes it at SA1. We split each SA1 across its mesh blocks. The split is by share of occupied private dwellings. Then we add the mesh blocks back up to the area you see. So the figures for very small areas are an estimate. They are not a direct ABS count.
At the LGA level, our figure for each group matches the ABS figure exactly. We add up the mesh-block values inside the LGA. Then we scale each group so its sum equals the ABS LGA figure. The page total may differ from the ABS total by a few families. That small gap is perturbation, a privacy step the ABS uses on its counts. We anchor on the per-group figures so each group matches ABS, and let the total carry the gap. When ABS publishes a non-zero figure for a group but every small area in the LGA perturbed to zero, we spread the LGA value evenly across the small areas so the group still appears. Per-small-area figures are estimates. They are not scaled to ABS on their own. Only the LGA total per group is anchored.
The Compare small areas view shows one stacked bar per small area. Each bar has the same seven groups as colour segments. Use the chart's count and 100% toggle. Count shows absolute numbers. 100% shows shares of each area's total. Filter to a single group to swap the stacked bar for a choropleth and cartograms. For very small groups you may see fractional values per small area — these come from spreading a small ABS LGA total evenly across the small areas.