ABSTRACT
Most definitions of the household include some reference to the dwelling unit, and some take co-residence as the single defining variable. For example, the 1980 US Census of Population and Housing states that “a household includes all the persons who occupy a housing unit”. Such definitions are not particularly helpful in self-help settlements, where the absence of professional architects means that there is no externally imposed familist ideology, as identified by Watson (1988:23), to ensure a neat match between domestic architecture and nuclear family. The concept of a household as a group of people living “under the same roof” is plainly inadequate in such a context. In my work in areas of self-help housing in urban Mexico, I have come across some people who form a single household but occupy more than one building: the different structures serve different functions (for example, kitchen/living/eating area in one, sleeping quarters in another). Conversely, several interrelated but separate households may occupy a single structure, sometimes with minimal physical distinction between the spaces occupied by different households (and certainly nothing as tangible as a “single locked door”—Robertson 1991:9).
