Has bigger spaces made us into smaller people?
As I mentioned in my earlier blog-post, I’ve observed people basically my entire life. From being the shy girl in the corner to being the outspoken and curious one asking people in my surroundings for their view on the subject.
There are so many different answers to the question to why people are interacting with one another in the way we are, and what we can do to change it, anything ranging from psychology to that the mothers are now working outside of the home.
What I have chosen to do is to focus on the home itself, still bearing in mind that roles have changed, both when it comes to the children’s role in the family, to the way apartment and houses are laid out.
The fact is that there has been a tipping point when it comes to how the basic family is constructed (taking Denmark as my main example), and that tipping point arrived some time last year (2009). The family structure has shifted from being a majority of couple-families to being single-families, in other words, from living with a partner and your child/children, to living alone with your child/children. What has made this change I’m not going to go into, it’s way to big of a subject for me to get my head around without studying it thoroughly.
After making a mind map about the subject of how our living conditions, and how it reflects on how we interact with the people around us, a couple of month ago I divided it into different categories, focusing on how we use our homes today.
Seeing that there’s not specific order I will just pull one out when i feel like it, without regarding what has been written before hand. Everything as an influence on everything, so the order goes round and about.
Since viewing this subject in a historical perspective, many different aspects of it have arisen, but mainly how our homes affect our family dynamics. Thus I will below highlight the historical changes in society that has lead to the modern family structure and how our modern homes not only are an image of this but also a major factor in defining us as individuals as part of the complex constellation called families.
THE BIG SPACE
My grandmother was 1 of 12 siblings. Growing up on the countryside they didn’t have much space, so they had to share the space they had, including rooms and beds.
My mother spent her summer with her 3 siblings on an airfield where her father worked. During this time she and her 2 sisters had one small room, her parents slept in the kitchen while her brother had his own room.
My siblings and I are so far apart in age, and from different couple constellations that we hardly ever spent more than a day or two under the same roof, so sharing a room, not to mention a bed with any of them just hasn’t been the case.
3 generations, and 3 very different ways of growing up.
My generation and I basically all had our own rooms, even from a rather young age. Many of my friends had their own TV with different games to go with it. That wasn’t the case in my family since my parents were against TV, and very much for the kitchen.
I know that this has influenced me in many ways. The kitchen is and has always been the heart of our home, a place not just to eat, but also where the homework was done and the big discussions were held.
Now I wonder, this big private space that is given to people right from the beginning, how is that influencing the way we interact with others?
Have these big private spaces had an impact on our tolerance and respect toward family, friends and strangers?
My answer to that question is YES! I believe bigger private spaces leads to less interaction with others, which leads to less confrontations, which leads to lesser capability to but yourself in someone else’s shoes, which in turn leads to less tolerance and respect for others.
I believe that one way to change that is to make the bedrooms into just that, bed rooms, a place to sleep and get away if you need a little time for yourself, but not a place to disappear or hide from the world while watching TV or playing computer games.
If we make the kitchen a more social and usable area, I believe that is a good start for changing people’s mindsets, and thereby the way they interact.
People who’ve grown up in big families or just in more clustered (talking about people here, not stuff) seem to be better at finding quiet time even when surrounded by people. So I believe it’s all about habits, and the habits we are taking on right now are taking us in the wrong direction.
