A Home of One's Own
Things were not off to a promising start with the new neighbor. After the usual pleasantries about how long I’d lived in my house and whether I liked the area, he asked if I had kids. It’s a fair question. A parent, like my new neighbor, would be interested in playmates or babysitters for his offspring and the low-down on the local schools.
I smiled and said, “No, it’s just me and the cats.”
Then he made the comment that would set us at odds like Hatfields and McCoys: “What does a single woman need with a single family home?”
Buying my home was never about “need.” Very few people buy only what they need — a roof over their heads and a safe place to sleep at night. A home satisfies both the physical need of shelter and some of the comforts a homeowner desires. Since my heart had been set on having a place of my own with a yard, a deck, a patio, and some trees, I opted to purchase this single family home. In my mind, “single family” was just a term, a holdover from an era long past. My neighbor, evidently, thought differently.
In this day and age, however, my new neighbor had better get used to seeing some new demographics. The National Association of Realtors reported that in 2007, 20% of home buyers were single women. Forty-five percent of these unmarried female home buyers lived alone, according to a June 2006 study by Rachel Bogardus Drew of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. In addition, since our present legal system is more likely to award custody of children to mothers rather than fathers, it is likely that an even greater percentage of the single men who make up 10 percent of home buyers are not living with children. And, according to the Harvard study, the vast majority of these single men and women are choosing single family homes — traditionally the domain of the two parent, multi-kid family — even if they don’t have children.
What these data, which do not even specify figures on the numbers of childless and childfree couples, suggest is that households without children are no longer few and far between — they are integrated into neighborhoods across the country.
Nonetheless, this integration can lead to a clash of lifestyle cultures. As Dawn Elmore-McCrary noted in the September 2007 edition of Unscripted, the childfree may be subjected to child-centric homeowner associations where dues money goes toward children’s activities and amenities. Sometimes even adult-oriented activities devolve into discussions about how Little Johnnie’s baseball team is going to championships and how Little Jenny will be performing in a piano recital next week. As much as these indignities annoy me, they are minor: it is the reactions of some of my childed neighbors that make me feel unwelcome in my own community.
There may be a regional component to this phenomenon. When I lived in a more urban area, no one was surprised to have a childfree neighbor. People without children — childfree and childless, single and married — were not uncommon, particularly among professionals who tended to start having children in their late 30s or early 40s, if ever. But here in the suburbanizing south, things are very different. My neighbor was not the first, and will probably not be the last, to make that comment or some variation of it. Contractors, co-workers, even salespeople at hardware stores, ask about my “husband” and “kids” and then wonder aloud what a “single lady” is doing in a “big old house.”
Though regional influences may be a factor, childfrees from across the country have reported similar experiences. Based on conversations on email lists, it seems that, while some have never been questioned about their homeownership decisions, others have received negative comments from co-workers, family, and complete strangers. They have experienced the implicit and explicit assumption held by a child-centric society that singles and couples without children don’t need a lot of room and should confine themselves to as little space as possible.
I would suggest that this assumption stems from misconceptions about maturity held by the childed. The belief that having children is a sign of maturity gives rise to the social stigma attached to childfrees that we are not mature because we do not have children. Since homeownership is also viewed as a sign of maturity, a child-centric culture is left to wrestle with reconciling the maturity of homeownership with the supposed immaturity of childfreedom. The discomfort that some childed homeowners display toward their childfree neighbors indicates that this reconciliation has not yet occurred.
In fact, it seems that the idea that a man, woman, or couple without children might enjoy suburban living is unfathomable to many childed residents of subdivisions. Yet here we are. I won’t pretend to speak for all the suburban childfree homeowners, but I think it’s safe to say that, in certain ways, the reasons we chose our homes are the same reasons the childed have chosen theirs. Living in a safe, clean community is important to us. Some of us even care about the school district, albeit probably only for concerns over the resale value of our homes. As to choosing suburban living over urban living, many of us prefer the quiet and more relaxed pace of life “away from it all.” As to choosing a single family home over an apartment or a townhouse, some of us enjoy landscaping, gardening, and outdoor entertaining activities that require a larger yard. For those of us who have dogs, a big back yard can be essential to the well-being of our canine loved ones. Simply put, a yard, a quiet environment, and a chance to get away from it all are not just things that childed people want. They are things that any person might want.
Is it hard to take care of a single family home “all by myself?” Not any harder than it would be if I had children running around my feet, demanding my attention. Two summers ago, I spent two to three hours a day for several weeks building my patio. I have sealed my deck and driveway and washed my siding. I spray for spiders and plant tomatoes. And I keep my yard free of those garish plastic eyesores known as kid toys. In short, I do things to keep my house looking great, things that do more for neighborhood property values than do the local schools.
So what’s a childfree woman doing in a single family home? Living the American Dream: job in the city, house in the suburbs, and three children of the feline variety welcoming me home every day.
Copyright . Published 1 July 2008 in Editorials.
Reader comments
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Great article! My husband and I recently moved from a city apartment to a suburban duplex. We’re renters, and we don’t plan on buying for a long while, but we knew we wanted more space and a real house, even if it is just a rental. We have 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms at our disposal now, plus a basement (unfinished), good-sized kitchen, and and a wooden deck in the back. The only room that isn’t used regularly is our guest bedroom, but we’re glad to have the space when we have houseguests (and we’re having a good friend up to stay this weekend). And it’s so quiet here, both in the house and our neighborhood in general. We love it, and never mind that it’s just us and our pet hamsters!
permalink — 2 July 2008, 20:12
My husband and I bought a 4 bedroom 5 bath (2 are 1/2 baths)house, and people ask what are we going to do with all that space. Instead of telling them that we are planning for the enevitable, when one of my parents has to come live with us after the death of the other, I simply tell them that we are a single family of TWO, enjoying the peace and quite.
permalink — 3 July 2008, 11:33
Congratulations on your new home! We left our townhome for a “single family” home over 3 years ago because we needed a yard for the dog, a better tax break, and to get away from the issues that are inherent with shared wall living and overbearing associations. We ended up purchasing a lot more house then we needed, but loved the neighborhood, the dead end street, the yard and the home itself. People questioned why we would need so much room if we weren’t having kids and we said we had plenty of other things to fill the space besides rugrats.
With the green trend phenomenon we do get many people who openly voice concern that we are using too many resources for two people which annoys me to no end. I’m not producing any new carbon footprints to pollute the earth so no matter what the size of my house I’m doing my part to save the environment.
permalink — 7 July 2008, 13:56
Great article. I personally have never had any more desire to own a home (or live in a house for that matter) than I have to bear children. But I’ve seen many childfree friends, married and single, get the weird looks from those with kids when they learned my friends were not only currently childfree but planned to stay that way. It’s a particularly annoying kind of discrimination and sometimes quite overt.
I’ve also noted that once people have kids, they seem to close their minds off to options…childfree people owning houses? Can they do that?
Like the old bumper sticker says “how do you know if you have a mind if you can’t change it?”.
Enjoy your house and your kitties (achoo! sorry, allergic!).
permalink — 8 July 2008, 13:27
Cool article! I plan on owning a house one day so my large breeds can have space to run around in. But only the yard needs to be big; the house itself should be small because I ain’t cleaning all that house! :)
permalink — 10 July 2008, 21:51