Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To find it odd that adults with their own families and houses refer to their parents' house as "home"?

98 replies

RedskyAtnight · 18/12/2020 09:07

This is coming up a lot on threads recently and I'm finding some of them very confusing as a result.

I'm an adult who is married with 2 children. I haven't lived with my parents for over 20 years. The house I live in with my husband and my children is my "home". If I was visiting my parents, I would say I was going to my parents' house, not that I was going "home" because the house they live in is not my home!

So, finding it confusing when people are talking about going home for Christmas - meaning they are going to stay with their parents.

Particularly when they refer to "staying at home" and "going home" within the same thread. Does this mean they consider they have 2 homes?

I can understand if you are an adult living with your parents that you would refer to their house as your home (because it is) and also that students/other young people who spent a large part of the year living with their parents would call this home. But if you're an adult with your own family and your own house who hasn't lived with your parents for years... why would you still call your parents' house "home"?

OP posts:
LubaLuca · 18/12/2020 09:09

I think you're more likely to call your parents' house 'home' if they still live in the house you grew up in, and if you've moved away from that area. Old habits die hard. I don't think it's that people believe they have two homes.

KathySelden · 18/12/2020 09:12

My home is my home but my parents house is my home to, I feel at home there and I grew up there. Many of my happy memories happened there. You can have more than one home.

Member984815 · 18/12/2020 09:12

Feel the same , but my husband would be the opposite . Same with my family Id say that's me my husband and our children. Lots would say that's their parents and siblings too.

evilharpy · 18/12/2020 09:12

I would talk about "going home" to mean back to my home town where I grew up. I've lived in this town for 11 years and have never felt at home here.

Welshwabbit · 18/12/2020 09:13

Well, I'd call my home in London home generally, but as my parents still live where I grew up (as does my best friend) I do talk about going home for Christmas. They both feel like home to me. It's also all about context - my best friend will ask if I'm coming home over the summer, and that feels perfectly normal, but if I was talking to someone with no connection to my home town, I'd say I was going "back to Wales" or to my parents' house over the summer.

Scarby9 · 18/12/2020 09:14

I say 'home' for both, although I do tend to add 'up' when talking about my parents' home (which was where I grew up). It is north from here, so I go 'up home' or 'up north' to visit.

QuestionableDanceMoves · 18/12/2020 09:14

My parents house is my home as much as my house with my children is my home. I feel as equally comfortable and relaxed at both.
I grew up in their house, in the town they live in and now live over 100 miles away so I do refer to going to theirs as going home

CabinClose · 18/12/2020 09:15

I said I was going home for Christmas when I lived away. Now I don’t and I call it my parents’ house. I think home refers more to the country/area than the house itself.

LadyLazaruss · 18/12/2020 09:16

I call both home. My DM's home is just as much mine as my actual one.

AlexaShutUp · 18/12/2020 09:16

I think you're more likely to call your parents' house 'home' if they still live in the house you grew up in, and if you've moved away from that area.

Yes, exactly. I used to talk about going "home" for years while my parents were still living in my childhood home. Now that they have moved, I just call it their house. My circumstances haven't changed, but theirs have.

My mum always talked about going home when we visited her parents. It was the house that she was born in, which my grandfather lived in until he died, when my mum was in her late forties. Of course it still felt like home to her - but so did the house where we lived as a family.

CaptainMyCaptain · 18/12/2020 09:18

I have always found this odd too.

lazylinguist · 18/12/2020 09:20

I don't find it that odd tbh, especially if it's someone who spent their entire childhood in the house/town/village where their parents still live, and has perhaps not settled in one area for very long since they moved away. It's pretty common to refer to somebody's 'home town', meaning the town they come from. It's not necessarily any reflection of family feelings, it's often more of feeling a tie to the place itself imo.

I don't feel that way, because I have no particular attachment to the area where my parents (still) live. We moved there when I was 11 and I never really got that 'this is where I belong/come from' feeling for it.

Aozora13 · 18/12/2020 09:20

I still call my parents house (where I grew up) “home” and think of visiting them in my hometown as “going home” even though the place where I live with my family is where I actually feel is my home. I guess for me “home” has a double meaning of “where you’re from” as well as “the house where you belong”.

ghostyslovesheets · 18/12/2020 09:21

I say ‘going home’ when I visit my mum because she lives where I grew up - I still consider the area my home despite leaving 24 years ago! It’s not her house that’s home (I never lived there) but the town.

Superstardjs · 18/12/2020 09:22

It is home. It is the house I grew up in, where I went back to after uni, where my dad still lives. YABU to assume that people think the same as you, it is possible to have strong emotional and sentimental connection to more than one place. When I go to my dad's it still feels like home.

evilharpy · 18/12/2020 09:23

@ghostyslovesheets

I say ‘going home’ when I visit my mum because she lives where I grew up - I still consider the area my home despite leaving 24 years ago! It’s not her house that’s home (I never lived there) but the town.
Yes this is it exactly. My mum lives in a retirement flat, not my childhood house, her flat isn't home but the town definitely is.
lazylinguist · 18/12/2020 09:23

I guess people also get in the habit of saying it when they go to university and then maybe spend a number of years living in potentially various flat shares etc when they start working. None of those places will get a real 'home' feeling, so your parents' house will probably still feel like home still.

Trisolaris · 18/12/2020 09:23

Agree about the ‘home town’ thing. When meeting up with old friends people want to know if you are ‘home’ for Christmas but to people in your present life you don’t refer to it that way. It’s the different circles thing.

AurorayRuben · 18/12/2020 09:23

This drives me mad!
I am an Irish person and has lived abroad for over 30 years.
When I go back to the house and area I grew up in not only am I welcomed 'home', I am also asked would I ever move back home!!
I actually think it's an Irish thing going back to the days when people had to emigrate for jobs and never fully settled away from the country of origin.
I also think and is certainly is the case with my family, that the attitude ' it's only revelenat if it happens in Ireland, iykwim'.
I am rarely asked about my life here but am expected to be fascinated by the local news about who bought a house and who did a person's wedding flowers..etc!
I am delighted hot to have to travel there over the Christmas period!

coffeeandgin26 · 18/12/2020 09:25

I still
Call
My parents house home, even though I moved out eleven years ago and live in another country. It IS home. I know that if for any reason my home with my kids and partner was no longer safe, or there, I would have a home to go to where I could relax and be myself 109%

coffeeandgin26 · 18/12/2020 09:26

To add, my parents moved into that house when I was one so it's always been home

Yugi · 18/12/2020 09:27

@AurorayRuben

This drives me mad! I am an Irish person and has lived abroad for over 30 years. When I go back to the house and area I grew up in not only am I welcomed 'home', I am also asked would I ever move back home!! I actually think it's an Irish thing going back to the days when people had to emigrate for jobs and never fully settled away from the country of origin. I also think and is certainly is the case with my family, that the attitude ' it's only revelenat if it happens in Ireland, iykwim'. I am rarely asked about my life here but am expected to be fascinated by the local news about who bought a house and who did a person's wedding flowers..etc! I am delighted hot to have to travel there over the Christmas period!
My grandparents left Ireland when they were young adults before my Mum was born. My family over there still say welcome home when we visit :D
Kolo · 18/12/2020 09:29

It's the house I grew up in, so was always my home, even when I had my own home as an adult. I think it's lovely that people have multiple homes (not houses).

Hardbackwriter · 18/12/2020 09:30

@lazylinguist

I guess people also get in the habit of saying it when they go to university and then maybe spend a number of years living in potentially various flat shares etc when they start working. None of those places will get a real 'home' feeling, so your parents' house will probably still feel like home still.
Yes, the only two houses I'd describe as 'home' other than my parents were the one I live in currently and the one DH and I lived in before that, which we bought in 2014. Before that I hadn't lived full-time with my parents for a decade but I also hadn't lived in any one property anywhere else for more than 18 months. I still have some of my bank stuff sent to my parents' house (must change that...) because it was my only address I could give and not have to change constantly for years.

Like others, it's context-dependent for me. My house with DH and DS is my 'home' but I still might refer to my parents' house as home, too. Their house is definitely in my 'home town'.

DuzzyFuck · 18/12/2020 09:31

I left England 16 years ago and where I live now is absolutely my home but when I'm going back to see family I would still naturally say I'm 'going home' in reference to the city, rather than the actual property (I don't stay with them anyway).

Then again, when I'm there I will tell people I'm 'going home on Monday' meaning my actual home. Everyone seems to know what I mean.