Let’s talk about home

24.10.2023

The authors:

Simon: I’m a second year student in liberal arts at Leuphana University. Philosophical questions such as what is the human condition or whether there is a purpose to life drive and sometimes hinder my academic research. You’ll likely find me wondering how we can impact the world just by reflecting on our attitude towards how we live in it.

Hanna: I am a first year student, majoring in cultural studies. The differences and similarities in cultures fascinate me and I believe that communication between us can solve even the most difficult crises, like becoming more sustainable. Especially music, as a universal language, can contribute in reaching across borders and starting international dialog.

So why is sharing a living space so beneficial to sustainability? First, there are ecological benefits of course, like reduced heating. Compared to several single-people flats being heated individually, sharing certain areas like kitchens, living rooms reduces the amount of energy used per person. This is also an economic benefit, as the individual has to pay less for those utilities. The same ecological and economical benefits arise from sharing a kitchen, by cooking meals together or washing clothes together (since one person often does not have enough items to wash to use a washing machine to its full extent). Lastly there are a lot of socially sustainable benefits to living in a shared space, be it as a family, friends, or randomly selected strangers.

As mentioned before, living together benefits the individual as much as the community. Having to take the other members of the family or shared apartment into consideration helps to develop social skills, especially the communication of needs and boundaries. As well as the respect for each other. An important learning can also be to organize the household routines to run smoothly (who does the cleaning, who goes shopping etc.). In a family, these responsibilities might be distributed hierarchically from parents to children. However, when you live with strangers, who are often your own age, this distribution becomes more egalitarian. In addition, these “strangers” come from all different kinds of socio-economic backgrounds and regions, giving an even broader spectrum of opinions and experiences. In spite of that, living in a multi-generational family home also carries its advantages such as being able to relay the childcare and certain household responsibilities to the retired (grandparental) generation, relieving the working generation, and in return receiving care in old age. To work, this system needs high reliability and responsibility from everyone involved, creating a strong sense of community. Three essential qualities determining the success of such systems are honest communication, the ability to make concessions to resolve conflicts and respectful attitudes toward each other. These skills can be useful for any other situation or problem that requires interpersonal interactions too.

This all sounds great, so why are these forms of living not more popular?

Comfort, habit, an idea of status and of course a certain degree of distrust play a huge role when looking for the problems in popularizing this form of living. In Germany it is not unusual for students, apprentices or trainees to live with other people of this category. In fact, one third of German students live in a WG (Wohngemeinschaft = shared apartment), and another quarter live with their partner, therefore share an apartment, too.

The forms of shared living (WGs, dorms etc.) are amongst the cheapest, and they are convenient for meeting new people easily after moving to a new city during time at university or apprenticeship. An increasing number of students also remain living with their parents. This is partly for convenience, and partly because of the skyrocketing prices in a lot of cities. This mostly changes after joining the workforce. Most people do not move in again with their parents after their studies but continue to live in another city alone until they start a family. In addition, there are more and more people remaining single. Divorce rates are increasing as well and with older age the need for privacy, as well as a certain status coming with the ability to afford a bigger apartment. It might also be awkward for older people to look for apartments to share if this is not the usual target group for this type of living. To solve this problem, more advertisements for shared living directly targeted at older people might help.

In Türkiye living in a three-generation-home is still more common than in Germany, and the older generations expect to be taken care of by their children. For example, helping with the household and other daily chores. This is due to the traditionally collectivist structure of Turkish society in which family is the core unit. We also find this spectrum of Individualism vs. Collectivism in Hofstede’s second cultural dimension¹. Cultures with high collectivism emphasize group harmony, cooperation, and interdependence. Individuals are expected to prioritize the needs and goals of their family, community, or organization over their individual desires. On the other hand, In societies with a high individualism score, individuals tend to prioritize personal goals, autonomy, and self-expression. They value independence and personal achievements. Such cultures encourage individuals to take care of themselves and their immediate families. In Turkey life of the individual is subdued to the well-being and status of the family, and in return the family provides support to its members. This system also relies on spatial proximity, making it less common for family members to live far away from each other. Our interview partners from Turkey assured us that they all had family members living close by or even with them. The idea of sharing living space is already entangled with this traditional societal structure, so much so that often this way of living is not perceived as very sustainable, but rather normal. Living sustainably is more associated with making buildings more sustainable or reducing one’s carbon footprint, rather than sharing resources and space. On the other hand, is everyone who does not belong to the family an outsider that is met with a certain amount of distrust. The younger generations, who have increasingly individualistic beliefs, and strive to fulfill their own dreams and ambitions, face the problem of not having an established system that allows them to live with others who are also living alone. The idea of moving in with a stranger whom you do not know and to share the most private spaces with is scary. It is understandable that somehow a control on who moves in with whom is asked for to ensure that there are no unpleasant surprises when moving in. In the future, ways need to be found to establish trust that this style of living can work well. Most importantly, it needs to be transparent who is moving in, so that any breaches can be traced back. Dorms or WGs, organized by universities could, for example, make sure that the inhabitants are actually students and match the different people with the help of a questionnaire to ensure a harmonious cohabitation. A rather extreme but effective measure could also be a surety from the government that a person is fit to share a living space with others.

During the process of further individualization of society in Türkiye, establishing new forms of living will be inevitable, so as not to face similar problems as Germany does right now.

So in conclusion, the differences in living habits are largely based on cultural differences. Although there is clearly a benefit to sustainability and human life in general when it comes to sharing living space, most people are heavily influenced in their living habits by their cultural and societal surroundings which makes living together not so easy. It is not easy to alter or break this influence as we’re born into it and never know anything else. That is to say we perceive the way we live and with whom we live as normal.

Interestingly, there is a noteworthy change from the older generations to the younger generations in their perception of what is valuable in life, which in turn also influences living habits. At the same time, an increasingly more individualistic society might also have these expectations for their homes and living situations. This could turn out to be a challenge when trying to organize more shared living space, since individual needs are often very different. Governmental influence to promote shared living space, surely is an option, however one should be careful not to impose living rules on the population as this would likely cause much push-back and a felt loss of self-determination among most people. Another way to go about making a positive effort in sustainable housing could be comparing, like we tried, different living habits in different places and countries in the world and analyzing the reasons for living traditions and how they’ve evolved. By taking a closer look at the influence of individualizing processes we might be able to come up with a model for a sort of best-practice living situation. This could also give us deeper insight into what factors shape people’s housing preferences. Maybe this could be compared to the spatial and aesthetic needs of different demographic groups looking for housing. Some might prioritize a well-connected infrastructure, others direct access to nature or a garden. In a similar fashion needs differ in terms of the need to be with people or to be more independent. After our research we came up with the following questions: Can people with the need to be highly socially connected in their home live comfortably with people who prefer to be more independent? And if so, what would the home need to look like, and what type of communication would need to be established? An interesting place to undertake this quest could be in student dormitories where all kinds of different people (mostly of a similar age however) get together but what do you think of this topic? What living standards are important to you? Let us know in the comments!

Sources:

Bibliography:

¹Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Sage Publications.
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations. Sage Publications

²In 2021, via the UN, Turkey changed its spelling to Türkiye.

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