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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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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:

madcatladyforever · 18/12/2020 09:32

My sister does this. I keep telling her her home is wherever she lives with her husband but she says it isn't. Its my parents house. I don't get it.

1starwars2 · 18/12/2020 09:33

My Dad confusingly refers to the house he last lived in with my Mum (before she died) as home. It is confusing because he sold the house 8 years ago, has lived in 2 houses since, and the home he refers to is 150 miles away.
Its sad that is still place he thinks of it as home.

Hardbackwriter · 18/12/2020 09:34

I also remember my dad getting a bit upset when we were discussing me going there for Christmas when I was about 22/23 and saying 'stop asking if it's ok for you to come on this or that day! This is your home, it will always be ok!'. I think he came to regret that attitude with my younger brother, who didn't leave home until he was 27 and who still, at 30 and with two children of his own, considered it fine to pop into their house just to get himself a cup of tea and help himself to the content of the fridge - DB was really miffed when the lockdown put an end to that!

CrotchBurn · 18/12/2020 09:34

Home is where mom is

CrotchBurn · 18/12/2020 09:35

/said in american accent

DailyPotion · 18/12/2020 09:37

I think it's more about going to your home town. My sister comes "home" when she stays with my parents, but she also goes home when she leaves.

I live round the corner from our parents, so I "go to mum's".

GroundAlmonds · 18/12/2020 09:39

I think those of us who don’t have two places to call “home” (due to bereavement, estrangement or something else awful), miss it, or at least notice it a lot.

It is very prevalent in the culture and not strange at all, for your own home to be “home” and your parents’ home(s) to be “home” too.

Cecily42 · 18/12/2020 09:40

I call both my current home and my parents home where I grew up home. So when I am going to see my parents, I am going home and when I go back to my own house I am going home

Bluntness100 · 18/12/2020 09:42

My daughter calls both her place and ours home. This is her home too, she has her own room here, where ever we live it will always be a home for her and she will always have a room.

Topseyt · 18/12/2020 09:45

I have more than one home.

My parents still live in the bungalow that I grew up in. It was my actual home until I was 18 and I still spent all of my university holidays there until I was 22.

I still visit occasionally but it is a three hour drive from where I live now. I still feel at home when I am there almost as much as I do when I am in my own family home here. I have a strong personal connection with both houses.

My parents house is a past home to me that is still very much in my life. My current family home with my DH and DDs is my main home. Both are my homes.

So no, I don't find it an odd expression at all. Nor would I find it odd if anyone referred to going to their parents'house. Either is perfectly normal.

TheGriffle · 18/12/2020 09:46

If my parents still lived in the house I grew up in then I would call it home. I’ve lived in my current house longer than I lived in their current house so this is my home and I don’t have another. I didn’t move far away though, still in the same town but if I lived in a different part of the country I would call coming back to my home town as coming home.

ILoveYoga · 18/12/2020 09:47

My parents still live in the house I grew up in. They still have my childhood furniture in the room.

I haven’t lived there for 30 years.

It’s still “home” but not my main “home”, which is the house I live in with my DH and DC.

I have many friends who say this as well as my multiple of cousins.

Topseyt · 18/12/2020 09:49

Oh yes, and when I am at my parents house I still sleep in my childhood bedroom. I loved that room and still feel a shade nostalgic whenever I am unpacking my suitcase in there now.

RedBetty · 18/12/2020 09:51

My parents still live in the house I grew up in, but I've never thought of it as home since I moved out many years ago. I think it might be a lot to do with the relationship or comfort it might bring tho. I was pretty keen to get out of there.

I had to move back, extremely briefly, whoops got divorced. It definitely didn't feel at all like home.

makemyweek · 18/12/2020 09:51

I've lived in England for many many more years than I ever lived in my childhood home but I still think of it as 'home' but I most often call it 'Mum and Dad's' to avoid confusion. I refer to my house with my Dh and dc as 'home'. Interestingly, my ds who is 17 and adores my parents wrote in their Christmas card about how sad he was not to be able to 'go home' to see them this Christmas. I was ridiculously touched and there will be serious tears when they read it.

Chanjer · 18/12/2020 09:52

Dunno, my mum lived for years in the house that I did much of my growing up in, others of my family lived there, it's quite correctly described as our "family home"

Variously I've called other countries home, I've called a little rented room home, I've called England home, I've called our flat home. Some of them I still call home, my country of birth is my home but so is the UK, my mum's old house and the house I was born in I still think of as homes

The term clearly means different things to different people

shinynewapple2020 · 18/12/2020 09:59

I can understand this if it's the home that you grew up in . My parents moved to their most recent house at the time DB and I were young adults so apart from short periods of time in uni holidays or following breakup we never really lived there, so to us that was always 'mum and dad's house' rather than home .
I would do the family thing though referring to both my DH/DC and my birth family as 'my family'.

Camomila · 18/12/2020 10:03

I am a married grown up with children but have always lived in rented flats/house shares and have never stayed anywhere longer than 3 years. I refer to my parents house as home because they've lived there since I was 7/8 and are unlikely to ever move again.

When we buy our own home I'll start refering to it as home.

bubblebubblebubbletrouble · 18/12/2020 10:03

It used to be home and home home (parents house) bit like going out or out out but now that they've moved to a different house & town it's mum & dad's or nana & granddad's.

ImmortalBalloons · 18/12/2020 10:05

It’s just a figure of speech

JustAnotherUserinParadise · 18/12/2020 10:07

I always find this weird too!
My parents still live in the house I spent age 8-18 in, but I stopped calling it "home" at about 23ish - I moved out at 18 to go to uni but still came "home" for long stretches in the holidays, but at 23 I got my first house and stopped doing that. So then it became "My Parents' house"

harrietm1987 · 18/12/2020 10:07

I’m Irish living in the UK and the place I was born will always be “home”, pretty sure that’s an Irish thing.

Love51 · 18/12/2020 10:09

My parents moved 150 miles to be round the corner from me. Previously visiting them indicated the only chance I had for babysitting, and I'd meet up with old friends, just like I did in the uni holidays. As someone said upthread, I would come home, then at the end of my visit, go home!
Now they live round the corner visiting them doesn't give me the opportunity to do anything I can't do at my house, except see them. (Obviously I can see them if they come to mine!) DH and I grew up in the same town, and now all our parents have moved away from their we no longer "go home" we "go to x town" and "stay with y".

Kissthepastrychef · 18/12/2020 10:12

My parents still live in the house they lived in in 1977. It's the house I grew up in and will always be Home. PIL moved several times since DH moved out so MILs home will never be Home for him as she no longer lives in their childhood home (FIL is sadly dead)

It's more about being where you grew up imho

Love51 · 18/12/2020 10:13

There is a definition of home as "the place where if you have to go there, they have to take you".
Lockdown has hammered home that your house is your house and the place where you show up and chill out is not your home and you can't go there at the moment.

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