Experimenting with Households and Inventing ’Home’

Alongside change in patterns of transition fromschool to the labour market, there has been massive recent change in patterns of household and family formation, as the period of dependent youth is extended, and family formation is deferred. This article explores recent developments in the UK. New ways of leaving home have produced new non‐familial household forms. Do these represent alternative forms of living, an alternative ‘lifestyle choice’? Or do they merely represent a response to economic constraint, a way of getting by during the extended phase of economic dependence in youth; a necessary new transitional and intermediate living arrangement between the parental home and the ‘eventual’ new family home? In either case, the living arrangements of young people should make us think hard about the ways in which we construct—and they apply in policy and practice—the concept of ‘home’. The article is based on recent empirical research by the author in the UK, but the questions it raises are more wide‐reaching.