CHRISTIE writes:

As a housewife and mother raised by a feminist “working woman,” I appreciate your insight into living under a traditional value system. The thoughts you and your readers have shared on your site have been so valuable to me as I figure out how to follow my conscience as a mother in a world that provides no example how to do so.

I am hoping you and perhaps your readers can help me with my current situation. (more…)

  There was an old woman    Called Nothing-at-all, Who lived in a dwelling     Exceedingly small: A man stretched his mouth     To its utmost extent, And down at one gulp     House and old woman went. (Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes, Cupples & Leon Company, 1930)

  MSN reports five reasons to buy a small house, including reasons discussed in previous posts on the subject here, such as the benefit of not hoarding large quantities of unused possessions. The report does not mention another important psychological benefit. Dwellers of small homes know each other. They are more likely, in my unprofessional opinion, to learn to manage the petty slights and annoyances that are part of communal living. Small houses create interior castles. The bloating of the American house at a time when family size has declined is a cause and result of spiritual shrinkage.

MARY K. writes:

When my husband and I were ready to purchase our first house two years ago, we deliberately looked for a “small” house, exactly for the benefits you describe. We could have easily gotten a bigger and cheaper house, and many people tried to persuade us to do just that. No regrets here, even when we have family flooding in for Thanksgiving and camping out in the only bathroom! (more…)

THE STANDARDS for what constitutes a normal family house have changed dramatically in recent decades. The average home size in the United States was slightly over 2,400 square feet in 2009. This figure, down slightly from the year before, is more than twice that of the ranches and Cape Cods of the 1950s, such as those built in the Levittown developments of New York and Pennsylvania. Ironically, we have smaller families to fit in our houses.

The suburban house has swelled to the detriment of the family. With bigger houses has come more pressure on women to work. More square footage has meant a loss of family intimacy and less ease in supervising children. Our population growth rate has declined, jeopardizing future prosperity, while our lives have gotten lonelier.

The fifties-style ranch house or Cape Cod is often viewed with sneering derision unless it has undergone a fantastic architectural makeover, complete with granite counter tops and cathedral ceilings. And yet it has much to commend it. (I should know. I have raised my children in one of these houses.) Peter Bacon Hales, of the University of Illinois, wrote of the Levittown Cape Cod house: (more…)