Having lived in nearly 20 homes in eight cities, I define “home” as the place where my “domestic affections” are centered, and where I enjoy unfettered contact with my belongings. For me, home is an environment to be shaped and reshaped in pursuit of the resident’s well-being (Stafford 2020). While that observation was made in context of exploring aging-in-place, and refers to adaptions made in response to one’s impairments or constraints, it reflects the ways in which I’ve approached the residences I’ve called home.
Environmental gerontologists categorize the qualities of Home into three groups: physical, including the home’s practical, operational, and structural integrity, the aspects of the surrounding neighborhood and of the inhabitants’ body-centered life inside the home; social qualities, related to the home “as a place of connection and socialization”; and unique personal qualities that support the inhabitant’s positive behavioral, cognitive, and emotional status — one’s healthspan.
“Home” and “a home” differ, broadly speaking, unless the word “new” is inserted in the middle of “a home.” Americans tend to use the phrase “a home” to refer to a physical location for a person or object, while we say “home” to refer to that place where we lay our heads at night, or to one’s geographic place of origin (or, of course, where the baseball batter awaits a hit). In the 20th century, when the elderly, disabled, and neurodiverse were institutionalized, they were said to have been moved to “a home.”
Over our lifespan, one’s sense of “home,” according to interpretations of Oswald’s and Wahl’s heuristic framework, evolves as we age to extend beyond the residence itself, embracing one’s environment; as we grow older, our neighborhood and community factor into what “home” means (Bigonnesse, 2014).
Several years ago, when I was helping individual and families evaluate and choose senior-living communities, I had a client who lived in the Berkeley Hills and very much felt the neighborhood was where she belonged. The woman lived alone in a park-like setting in a mansion with panoramic, floor-to-ceiling views of the bay. A creek ran through her property. She had lived there for 60 years. Concerned about her declining cognitive functionality and failing vision, her children wanted her to consider moving to one of the local assisted living communities. She refused to discuss their worries, and they decided she might listen to a friendly “expert.”
The Berkeley woman’s focus on remaining at home manifested as an attitude that gerontologists have identified as environmental docility: this woman seemed unaware and passive instead of acknowledging the increasing environmental press, or the stress placed on her by the sheer size and shape of her home. (Stafford, 2020). She did try to mask her cognitive decline, and repeatedly brushed off her children’s concerns about her ability to flourish while living alone in that potentially unsafe place. This client’s situation represents a model of negative aging in place: what one might call “stuck-in-place” in an environment not designed to meet her increasing needs (Weil, 2020). But, if we are to be person-centered and allow people their autonomy and dignity, ethically we must enable this kind of embrace of Home and find ways to accommodate and support, as long as they can flourish.
References
Bigonnesse, C., Beaulieu, M., & Garon, S. (2014). Meaning of Home in Later Life as a Concept to Understand Older Adults’ Housing Needs: Results from the 7 Age-Friendly Cities Pilot Project in Québec, Journal of Housing For the Elderly, 28:4, 357-382, DOI: 10.1080/02763893.2014.930367
Stafford, G. & Betrabet Gulwadi, G. (2020). Exploring aging in place inquiry through the lens of resilience theory, Housing and Society 47:1, 42-62, https://doi.org/10.1080/08882746.2019.1689088
Weil, J. (2020). Developing the person–place fit measure for older adults: broadening place domains. The Gerontologist, Volume 60, Issue 8, December 2020, Pages e548–e558, https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnz112