Role of Home in Adult Development: Women and Men Living Alone Describe Their Residential Histories

Ten women and men living alone were asked to describe all the places they had lived in individual open-ended interviews. Assessment of interviews yielded a sequence of environmental and psychological changes participants experienced after leaving their parental home. They involved: an initial phase of feeling at an incipient awareness of their need for a home; and the psychological and physical arrival at a place that felt like home. These findings indicate that home has varying environmental and psychological dimensions across people's lives and does not seem to depend upon traditional family structure for its meaning.