‘My home is not homey anymore’: spatial tactics and the reconstitution of home among young adult children of remarried families

The dominant narratives of family restructuring often privilege the voice of the remarried parents. This study shifts the focus to young adult children, exploring how they employ spatial and relational tactics to navigate everyday tensions with stepparents and reconfigure their senses of home. Conducted over twelve weeks with twenty-three participants aged 17–22, the research adopted a three-phase qualitative design that combined biographical interviews, visual mapping and photo-elicitation. Findings reveal that participants create distributed ‘homescapes’, which refer to assemblages of places, relationships, objects and practices (e.g. friends’ rooms, grandparents’ homes, malls, temporary hotel stays) to sustain psychological well-being and manage emotional strain within restructured families. These tactics, encompassing acts of relocating, affiliating and returning, illustrate how home is reconfigured across multiple spatial and relational sites. By foregrounding children’s voices, this study offers a psycho-spatial perspective on homemaking that highlights agency, care and cultural values of rukun (harmony) and berbakti (filial devotion) in navigating the complexities of remarried family life.