Doubled Up
Shared Households and the Precarious Lives of Families
Hope Harvey
More than fifteen percent of US children—over eleven million—live in doubled-up households, sharing space with extended family or friends. These households are even more common among low-income families, families of color, and single-parent families, functioning as a private safety net for many in a country with extremely limited public support for families. Yet despite their prevalence, we know little about how shared households form and how they shape family life. Doubled Up is an in-depth look at the experiences of families with children living in doubled-up households.
Drawing on extensive interviews with sixty parents living in doubled-up households, Hope Harvey examines what circumstances and motivations lead families to form doubled-up households, how living in shared households affects daily routines, and how families fare after these arrangements dissolve.
Harvey shows that although families rely on doubling up to get by in the face of rapidly rising housing costs, precarious labor markets, and unaffordable childcare, these private arrangements are rarely sufficient to overcome such structural barriers. And doubling up incurs its own costs for both host and guest families. For doubled-up families, negotiating household relationships and navigating shared space reshapes family life. Understanding the dynamics of doubled-up households extends scholarship on family life beyond the nuclear family and points the way toward better policies that will serve all families.
Published by Princeton University Press
Praise for Doubled Up
Poignant, sometimes heartbreaking reflections. . . . [Doubled Up] sheds much-needed light on a little discussed aspect of income inequality in America.—Publishers Weekly
Compelling. . . . Doubled Up is particularly striking in how it reveals the tension between persistent cultural expectations rooted in mid-century ideals of the independent nuclear family and increasingly constrained opportunities as a backdrop for the emergence of doubled-up households. . . . [Doubled Up] makes important contributions to current policy discussions.—Mariana Amorim, Housing & Society
A unique and timely look into the experiences of people living in the US who are ‘doubling up’—that is, sharing housing with extended family or friends. . . . Harvey’s analysis brings a sophisticated and nuanced analysis to the doubled-up relationship. She inspires compassion but also offers recommendations for safety net policies that move the US beyond this ‘private’ approach to addressing housing insecurity and toward practices that provide security and safety to everyone living in the US. A must read for all.—Choice
In this astute and compelling book, Harvey offers an intricate, multilayered look at the processes and roles that shape the lives of families with young children who, out of their own dire necessity, often find themselves sharing a household with relatives and friends. She artfully demonstrates how the precarity of circumstances, both within and external to shared households, creates challenges for some and opportunities for others, leading to differential outcomes in families’ abilities to achieve their single-family housing dreams. This book is a must-read on the rarely discussed challenges and virtues of doubling up, particularly for families living on the margins.—Linda Burton, University of California, Berkeley
Home is at the heart of the American dream. As that dream fades, more and more families are forced to double up. While turning to family or friends might seem like the perfect solution to economic hardship, Harvey shows this safety net to be fraught with conflict and risk. Ultimately, doubling up feeds family instability and puts children’s well-being at risk. Doubled Up is an indispensable examination of this complex phenomenon.—Kathryn Edin, coauthor of $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
