The Meaning of Home Alone

Abstract

In our UK study, a variety of approaches were taken in exploring the relationship between sense of self and home. Information about the meaning of home would inevitably emerge from more general discussion of the experience of living alone. One direct thread of study involved exploring how open the home was to visitors, cooking for others, encouraging friends or family to stay overnight and to generally making visitors feel at home. Another involved discussing whether interviewees felt they had put a personal stamp on their home and another, potentially in tension with this, explored the extent to which the home expressed the presence of others. The home may be used to sustain or develop intimacy with friends and family (children, parents, partners, siblings and other biological, legal or fictive relations) whether or not such persons are normally geographically distant or local. How important is it to people living alone to have hospitable homes? To what extent do people living alone who have long-term partners or who parent children with a residence elsewhere, wish to create a sense of shared home or a home-from-home for them?