Is where you live making life more difficult for your marriage? That’s something that occurred to me and obviously to others too like architect Michelle McSharry.In the article yesterday about Australian Fathers, Michelle McSharry suggested two factors are making life harder for couples.
One is the size of homes and gardens which is contributing to a high housework load.
It’s an interesting fact of modern society that houses are getting larger while the size of families in them is shrinking. Most houses no longer include grandparents or extended family as they once did.
It is usually only the husband, wife and roughly two children. So why does everyone need so much room? I suspect it’s because everyone does there own thing and there is not the interaction between family members there once was. In my view both children and parents are missing out by creative such divisions as playrooms or rumpus rooms for the children, separate to and usually a long way away from the usual living room.
If people were happy to settle for smaller houses and maybe not brand new but something already established as we did in our marriage, then the mortgage repayments would not be so high and put as much stress on marriage and family.
The other factor making life harder for couples is having to commute long distances to get from home to work, all of which adds time to otherwise long work hours. As people are pushed further and further into the new suburbs because they it is all they can afford, time with spouse and family gets significantly eroded. Again a smaller house in closer and already established could be the answer.
I think we need to rethink seriously about the type of stress this puts on a marriage and on a family and look to see if there are ways we can’t do something about it. Otherwise we could be killing our marriage and ourselves in the process. I’d rather have a smaller house requiring less housework and my husband home more to spend more family time together than have a large house with all the mod cons stuck out the back of beyond. What do you think?
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