Home as a Private Space: Some Adolescent Constructs

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Abstract
This paper discusses findings from a pilot study of Tasmanian Year 7 and Year 10 (high school) students' perceptions of home as an idealized social construct and as a private space. Adolescent understandings of houses as internal or private space, as physical places in which families live and as visual or emotional ‘triggers’ for perceptual and cultural responses, are identified and explored by means of innovative research methods using photographic stimuli of different types of houses. The relationship between concepts of ‘house’ and ‘home’ are discussed. Preliminary findings suggest a surprising uniformity in what adolescents themselves perceive of the meaning of ‘home’, its social and cultural characteristics and its positive or negative connotations. Findings, however, emphasize gender differences in the use of private space and notions of ‘privacy’ and security. The adolescents' constructs of the ‘ideal’ or ‘preferred’ home appear not to correspond directly with the local reality, and appear to be rather a reflection of ‘storybook’ images. However, with regard to adolescents' views regarding where they expect they will actually live, the data show a much closer relationship to reality. The implications of these findings in the context of other international research are discussed.

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