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book: Doubled Up
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Doubled Up

Shared Households and the Precarious Lives of Families
  • and
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2025

About this book

How sharing a home with extended family or friends serves as a crucial, but imperfect, private safety net for families with children

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.

Author / Editor information

Hope Harvey is an assistant professor at the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Kentucky and a research affiliate at the Center for Poverty Research.

Reviews

"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." --- "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 --- "Poignant, sometimes heartbreaking reflections. . . . [Doubled Up] sheds much-needed light on a little discussed aspect of income inequality in America." --- "Winner of the Scholarly Achievement Award, North Central Sociological Association"

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    v
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    Introduction: The Rise of Doubled-Up Households

    1
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  • Part I: Becoming Doubled Up
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    1 Doubling Up as a Guest

    27
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    2 Doubling Up as a Host

    45
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  • Part II: Living Doubled Up
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    3 Authority and Autonomy

    69
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    4 Economic Exchange

    89
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    5 Romantic Relationships

    112
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    6 Raising Children

    132
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  • Part III: After Doubling Up
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    7 The Challenges of Doubled-Up Household Dissolutions

    155
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    8 Getting By and Getting Ahead by Doubling Up

    175
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    Conclusion: The Imperfect Private Safety Net

    194
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    Acknowledgments

    213
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    Methods Appendix

    215
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    Notes

    227
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    References

    251
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    Index

    271
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
March 7, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780691247045
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691247045
eBook ISBN: 9780691247045
Keywords for this book
Household; Family; Parents; Guests; Hosts; Daughter; Income; Month; Rent; Relationship; Economic; Unit; Adults; Sister; Friends; Nuclear; Kids; Rules; Assistance; Romantic; Apartment; Bedroom; Isa; Partner; Costs; Child; Money; Childcare; Couple; Food; Residential; Room; Expectations; Independence; Instability; Starr; Cousin; Latonya; Net; Mom; Market; Authority; Mothers; Space; Stable; Goals; Resources; Financial; Stuff; Rental; Annalise; Bills; Ideal; Job; Takayla; Lauren; Residence; Poverty; Double; Housing costs; Temporary; Contributions; Householder; Simone; Status; Neighborhood; Husband; Kevin; Law; Arrangements
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
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