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A central premise of the first demographic transition theory is that demographic change would occur more slowly in rural than urban areas. Few studies, however, have investigated whether rural areas remain holdouts during the second demographic transition. To address this gap, this study (1) examines trends among rural and urban families in Canada and the United States over a 30-year period and (2) determines whether compositional differences in demographic, socioeconomic, and religious factors explain current differences between rural and urban families. We find that rural Canadian women continue to have, on average, 0.6 more children than urban women. However, rural families do not trail behind urban families on any other indicator of family change. In fact, rural women in both countries are now significantly more likely to cohabit and roughly 10 percentage points more likely to have children outside of marriage than urban women. These differences are largely explained by lower levels of education and income among rural American women and fewer immigrants in rural Canada. Examining family change through a rural–urban lens fills important empirical gaps and yields novel insights into current debates on the fundamental causes of ongoing family change in high-income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature has applied system-focused structures to understand the success of First Nations Peoples' nutrition and exercise group programmes. Existing system-focused measures have included biomedical outcomes, access and service utilization. By broadening the focus of programme success beyond the system, we can evaluate programmes from a First Nations Peoples' lifeworld perspective. Critical hermeneutics and yarning using a lens of Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action to the literature has the potential to transform understandings of "success" in First Nations Peoples' nutrition and exercise group programmes. In this literature interpretation, we explored the critical success factors from a lifeworld perspective, giving scope to go beyond a system perspective to include a cultural, social or personal perspective. Our yarning led us to understand that there is a communicative relationship between explicit system structures and implicit lifeworld concepts that are critical success factors for First Nations nutrition and exercise group programmes. We have developed a set of reflective questions to guide others in considering a lifeworld perspective. Our findings represent a shift away from success measured by the dominant power structure to respect the lifeworld culture, knowledges and values of First Nations Peoples towards shared understanding and mutual decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]