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For a long time, architecture and housing policy have been viewed through the lens of providing a product. But the pandemic showed that for certain people lacking space, with small children, or with complex families, housing can add to their ailments and cause ill mental health.
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Target audience
Architects and housing providers
The problem
It is necessary to know what elements of housing and its interaction with family activities generate mental health problems, and how it connects with people’s feelings of home.
What we did and why
We created an empirical mixed-method study focusing on working mothers during their adaptation to COVID-19 restrictions, reflecting on the three years of the pandemic and its relationship to housing. The first section, quantitative, allowed us to identify which social groups were included in the sample. The second part was the qualitative analysis process of these groups.
Our study’s contribution
Quantitative explorations and thematic analysis revealed conditional associations linking vulnerable residential situations to adaptation difficulties, low mental health scores, and negative feelings toward home, especially among women in blended or single-parent families, in small dwellings, or self-employed. Our project innovates in several areas:
1. It shows that there is a link between mental health, residential situations, and feelings of home.
2. It shows that single mothers, recomposed families, and families with small children, can suffer adaptation problems during crises that affect their mental health if the housing does not have a minimum of space and flexibility.
3. The self-employed are also among the families where housing plays a crucial role.
Impacts for city policy and practice
Implications:
1. When designing residences, the needs of different families and new ways of working from home should be taken into account.
2. For future residential projects, we should consider layouts with the potential for more multifunctional areas and modular partitions.
3. In terms of housing policy: Tiny homes are enormously risky for some populations, and help should be given to those who, because of their income or family structure, need more flexible and spacious housing.
Further information
Full research article:
[OPEN ACCESS] Mental health and residential adaptations during the pandemic: a mixed-methods study of working mothers by Pablo Garcia de Paredes, Thierry Ramadier, Marie Baron, Annie LeBlanc & Carole Després
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