精东传媒

January 9, 2018

With apartment living on the rise, how do families and their noisy children fit in?

A growing number of Australians live in apartments. The compact city model presents many benefits. However, living close to each other also presents challenges.

,  

Rapid growth in apartment developments in recent decades has led to a . Households with children are on the front line of such tensions. They are one of the fastest-growing demographics living in apartments. Analysis of the latest census data show, for instance, that .

Apartment design and cultural acceptance of families in the vertical city have not kept pace with this shift in housing forms. Cultural expectations that families with children ought to live in detached houses are persistent. Apartment planners and developers reproduce these expectations by .

With children鈥檚 sounds being difficult to predict or control, changing apartment demographics are an issue for planners and residents alike.

 

 

 

 

Trying to be good parents and good neighbours

My research explores the everyday experiences of families living in apartments in Sydney. It reveals that .

Apartment living often creates an emotional dilemma between being a good parent and being a good neighbour. Parents want to allow children to be children, but are ever anxious about annoying the neighbours.

Cities are layered with many different sounds, but the home is framed as a private space of peace and quiet. Sounds that intrude are considered noise. The 鈥済ood鈥� apartment neighbour avoids sounds that penetrate neighbours鈥� homes.

This is near impossible when children are involved (particularly when apartments are poorly designed). Key pressure points include crying at night and playing and running during the day.

Parents spoke about the challenges of sleep training in an apartment. They wanted to be considerate neighbours, so felt anxious and guilty when their children did not comply. Some received angry letters from neighbours, or heard them call out and bang on walls and ceilings in midnight protests.

One mother described the difficult juggling act of an unsettled baby and an upset neighbour:

[The neighbour] called out 鈥� 鈥楶ick up your baby!鈥� 鈥� I was so upset because we are trying our best and we were exhausted ourselves 鈥� [The neighbour] banged on the ceiling really loudly 鈥� I felt it on my feet, like it was shaking 鈥� That just kind of added to my stress 鈥� When I got back into bed after the shrieking finished and he [the baby] went back to sleep, and the stomping on the roof finished 鈥� I just said, 鈥業 don鈥檛 know if I can do that again鈥� 鈥� knowing that, you know they鈥檙e hearing it all of course, and we felt terrible.

Parenting anxieties were not limited to night-time. Monitoring kids鈥� play to minimise noise made parents feel like the 鈥渇un police鈥�.

I always feel like I am constantly telling them 鈥榥ot in here, not in there, don鈥檛 do that鈥� 鈥� I鈥檓 constantly worried that we are annoying the neighbours. Because they are kids, they are loud. They don鈥檛 have a volume button.

Parents attempted many strategies for managing noise. These included putting down carpet and foam mats, restricting some activities to rooms without adjoining walls or to 鈥渟ociable鈥� hours, closing windows and covering air vents. The expectation that their children鈥檚 sounds do not belong in apartments weighed heavily.

When he [the neighbour] first started complaining, Harry [son] was crawling. Imagine trying to teach a crawler that they are not allowed to crawl through the house 鈥� You know, he [the neighbour] wanted the impossible and got angry with us when we couldn鈥檛 deliver that for him, with no kind of seeming effort to understand where we were coming from 鈥�

This family鈥檚 neighbour had written notes, aggressively banged on their walls and threateningly confronted the parents over their children鈥檚 noise. The mother described feeling vulnerable and at a loss:

I feel like we have entered this entirely new area of discrimination that I had no idea existed before, but is actually quite prevalent among our peers. It is common among the mothers in my mothers鈥� group 鈥� People just don鈥檛 like children and they don鈥檛 like children鈥檚 noise 鈥� And you know parenting is hard 鈥� So to have the 鈥極h my God I am pissing loads of people off鈥� in the back of your mind as well 鈥� is really uncomfortable.

While not all families reported such negative experiences, almost all felt anxious about noise and had stories of friends who had experienced problems.

The sounds made by children were always front of mind. Aware of their neighbours鈥� surveillance and (at times overt) moral judgments, they changed their domestic routines and modified their homes as much as possible.

 

 

 

 

People need apartments made for families

Broader changes are needed. Families living with children in apartments challenge norms that delineate the home as a place of quietude; that define 鈥済ood neighbours鈥� as tranquil ones; and that position children as belonging elsewhere (detached houses). And they come up against such norms in dwellings that hamper their best efforts to regulate sound.

Families living in apartments actively pursue strategies for making everyday life 鈥渨ork鈥�. But there is only so much that individuals can change. The wider problem of apartments鈥� poor acoustic design and performance persists. Both if the policy paradigm of urban consolidation is to have any hope of meeting the needs of a diverse population.

Read more: 

, PhD Candidate in Human Geography,

This article was originally published on . Read the .

UOW academics exercise academic freedom by providing expert commentary, opinion and analysis on a range of ongoing social issues and current affairs. This expert commentary reflects the views of those individual academics and does not necessarily reflect the views or policy positions of the 精东传媒 of 精东传媒.