Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3 4

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:

Thingsdogetbetter · 18/12/2020 12:28

I call my parents' house just that to my friends. It would break my parents' hearts if I called it that to them. Did it once and never again. No matter where I live and consider home, I am still their 'child' and they see their home as my home too. Arguing the point that I haven't lived there for 50 years is not worth upsetting them.

hansgrueber · 18/12/2020 12:32

We used to have a revere of this, we had our children when we lived abroad, when we came back to visit our families in the UK we would refer to 'home'. meaning where we lived. My mother used to get really annoyed, This is home, not there. No matter how I tried to tell her that they'd never lived in the UK, that their home was where we lived, they went to school etc. she still insisted that the UK was 'home'.

hansgrueber · 18/12/2020 12:33

@HighSpecWhistle

Who actually cares??

YABU for giving this any thought.

Surely that applies to 90% of what people get worked up about on this site!!

Longdistance · 18/12/2020 12:33

I don’t call my mums home in conversations even though it was my childhood home, but, in my mobile my mums number is home. My home number is under ‘my home number’.

bananaboats · 18/12/2020 12:37

I think this is strange too, I still live in the same area I grew up in so maybe different of you've moved away but I would never refer to my parents house as home even though they do still live in the house I grew up in. It's not my home and hasn't been for over 15 years so would feel a bit weird to me to refer to it as that.

Pinkywoo · 18/12/2020 12:46

"Home is where Mom is" - bleeurgh!

Home is where you live, your parents live in their home, you live in yours.

Ginfordinner · 18/12/2020 12:49

@LubaLuca

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.

This is exactly why I used to say "I'm going home to visit my parents". I moved over 200 miles away from my family.

They say home is where the heart is, and I had two homes.

Notjustanymum · 18/12/2020 12:50

My DH used to refer to visiting his DM and DF as “I’m just going home” - this after we had been married for over 15 years.
Given that he had never lived in their house (they moved just after we got our first place together) I sat him down and explained gently that his home is here, with me and our DC’s, and that even if he had ever lived at his DP’s house, it was a bit hurtful to refer to their house as “home” while our house was where he lived, happily, and had done so for many years.
He never referred to their house as home again...

Meatshake · 18/12/2020 13:02

Ohhh I just realised I do this. Never thought about it before but I'll say stuff like "just going to pop home to mum's before we go home".

I'm obviously barking as it makes no sense, yet no one has ever questioned it. Ohhh I'm going to be hyper aware of this now 🤣

Mommabear20 · 18/12/2020 13:05

I think it's great when people refer to their parents house as 'home'. To me it implies they had a safe and happy childhood!

Chanjer · 18/12/2020 13:12

He never referred to their house as home again...

brrrrr

Why does it diminish what you've got to hear somewhere else called home?

Reeks of insecurity

Hardbackwriter · 18/12/2020 13:31

@Notjustanymum

My DH used to refer to visiting his DM and DF as “I’m just going home” - this after we had been married for over 15 years. Given that he had never lived in their house (they moved just after we got our first place together) I sat him down and explained gently that his home is here, with me and our DC’s, and that even if he had ever lived at his DP’s house, it was a bit hurtful to refer to their house as “home” while our house was where he lived, happily, and had done so for many years. He never referred to their house as home again...

Wow, that's astonishingly petty, controlling and insecure of you...

ForeverAintEnough · 18/12/2020 13:50

@Notjustanymum jeez so insecure.

@Longdistance just realised I’ve also got my parents house as ‘home’ in my photo me and my home number is in as the first line of our address 😂

Notjustanymum · 18/12/2020 14:04

@Hardbackwriter, @ForeverAintEnough, @Chanjer,
I hadn’t thought of that! But no, I didn’t have a very happy home life growing up.
Maybe that’s why it did make me feel a bit insecure, although I realise now after 30+ years that I had no reason to be.
And I did love my MIL and FIL very much, btw. I guess that my DH was so very kind about my request because he realised my reasons at the time...
Thanks for the perspective...

woodhill · 18/12/2020 14:08

My parents house was still home but it isn't theirs anymore.

My dds have their own homes but our house is still home it ms

Hesma · 18/12/2020 14:15

I call my parents house home because to me it always will be as I grew up there and the people I love still live there. My Mum is irish and still calls her home town home and I do too as I have so many happy and living memories in that house and town.

ForeverAintEnough · 18/12/2020 18:56

Just overheard DH on phone to a friend “are you staying in your house for Christmas or going home” so he’s another one

thegcatsmother · 18/12/2020 19:47

My parents were divorced, and each had their own house, so home for me has been with dh since 1986.

I did talk about going home when we lived abroad, that is, back to UK.

whatswithtodaytoday · 18/12/2020 19:55

My parents' house is still saved as 'Home' in my phone, so that shows how much it definitely is home! (We don't have a landline so I never needed to update it to my house.) I grew up there and it has my parents in it, of course it's home. I know which stairs creak and where the stopcock is, and I know the neighbours better than I do my own!

BackforGood · 18/12/2020 20:04

Not sure how you cope with much of life, if you find something as common / normal as this "very confusing".

It's hardly complicated.
Of course your heart can consider both your own home, and the place you have fond memories of growing up "home".

The context of the conversation of someone talking about traveling 200 miles to be with their family in the area they grew up, is going to be very different from someone 'nipping home to get changed before they meet you later' - can you really not grasp what people are talking about from the context ?

Original poster

RedskyAtnight · 18/12/2020 20:33

Not sure how you cope with much of life, if you find something as common / normal as this "very confusing".

I'm not sure how you cope with much of life with an inability to read and comprehend.

I said that several threads recently had been confusing. For example, there was one where the OP talked about "going home" without any context and it wasn't particularly clear until a fair way through that she meant "going home" to be her parents' house and not her own. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that someone is talking about their own home and not their parents, if you're not given any information to assume otherwise.

OP posts:

Bluewavescrashing · 18/12/2020 20:36

People who say they live at home in their 20s or 30s and who live with their parents sound a bit odd to me.

I live at home in my own house with DH and DCs. If I moved back in with my parents I'd say I was living with them but it wouldn't be the same as having my own home.

WinterGarden633 · 18/12/2020 20:46

I have my own “home” in another county to where I grew up.
I always call my parents house- and my hometown ‘home’ because it refers to the place that shaped me, and which I still love dearly as other family members and good friends still live there.
It doesn’t mean that I don’t have a “home” with my husband and in my new town/county, it’s just an old home vs a new home.

Flip

1 2 3 4