THE romance of the quaint cottage as a functional living unit in this day and age can be a nightmare, what with the dictates of the demands that are flung onto the practical evolution of the family today. I have 38 collective years of raising children, and the same story echoes across the conversation plains with other fathers, and some mothers.
Most of us were raised in two-bedroom housing, to which efforts were made to transfer into a home. Privacy sought by adults had to be enforced; and it did not endure for extended periods, even with the threat of ‘licks’.
AN UNAVOIDABLE REALITY
Those were difficult habitats to manage, especially when the child population extended to four and five, and elements of privacy for growing children became an unavoidable reality. In many cases, the sibling of the parents, mainly a childless aunt of the children, would facilitate an adoptive sanctuary for a teenage child.
Education is a separate ‘being’ that imposes its nature on the home. The assignments given to children in many cases cannot be fulfilled through the text books parents are required to purchase, thus the need for a computer with Internet access, a printer, paper and extra ink cartridges and some furniture for filing and accommodation, which points to the obvious need for a study room.
Not included in the design of 90% of the turn-key houses built over the last 40 years, these initiate the invasion of spaces where space is already cramped, and stress is flinging its contagious tentacles in all directions.
The homemaker, most likely the mother of the brood, finds her anger rising as sacred decor is violated; no longer in these mentioned houses can a new suite, with the left-over chairs of the old suite, be displayed without the natural suffocation of claustrophobia.
Then there is the husband, the mythical head of the home, provider and object of authority. Whether tradesman, service provider or employee, he will need a desk or table and a medium bookshelf tucked into some corner to accommodate his sanity; to avoid the retreat to the ‘Beer Garden’ with its huntresses and counter-productive temptations.
A NEW AGE
A new age is upon us, and our new community developers cannot ignore it.
This is not only a local phenomenon; most people who migrate move into two-room apartments designed for blue collar workers over a hundred years ago.
With the advent of the personal computer, a new world emerged; home service and creative businesses are part of the economic equation.
President Granger is urging young people to develop businesses; this is the right direction for a future that will include much less public employment.
A Bureau of Commerce will have to exist to catalogue what we offer, as against what is needed across the commercial marketplace. But in keeping with the topic of this article, home designs will have to be tailored and costed to help potential homeowners in the resident commercial category that now exists on the current housing forms.
Rather than have them purchase inadequate house designs, then have them experience the gruelling process of ‘necessary improvements’, every home should now come with a study area to accommodate parent and student academic activities.
Because this is where we are in the 2020s home environment [I’ve separated ‘House’, which is the location you go to grab some rest because of prevailing circumstances, as against ‘Home’, that is, where you want to be].
Home economics in schools should, if it doesn’t now include it, provide instructions on space awareness; whatever inspired those three-piece suites in a little cottage that demanded observation and balance to move ten feet, because in the middle of it is a centre table with vase with too much artificial flowers that topple at the slightest nudge creating forbidden territory, are probably personal choices, yet options should be offered.

THE ONLY OPTION
The home studio and operation for many talented people is the only option especially in the arts, where the restrictive layout of general support place arts practitioners as less than 4% of homeowners.
The new necessary standards of home design are not for any specific industry, but for the national accommodation; a bookcase should be worked into the design, to imply the need to read, whether trade books, novels or non- fiction. The myth that teachers are responsible for the entire intellectual consciousness of the child has to be replaced by both obvious and subliminal messages to both children and parents that they, too, have a part to play in their education and further education respectively.
The house that becomes a home must inspire and be the place of refuge for mind, body and spirit.
In closing, I want to urge the application of specific rules that explain methods and materials used in building, and why specialist applications are necessary, and the consequences, for example, of not using construction plastics etc. A poor man should not have to build his home, as well as the contractor’s girl friends’ home, because of his ignorance and trust.