By admin 
When two spouses separate, the painful problem of sharing furniture and household appliances often arises. Who keeps what, and why? The division of personal property is internal to any process of family dissociation, which often forces ex-spouses to buy back what they lack in order to settle down again, one alone, and the other with their children [1] . It is not uncommon for the increasingly frequent family reconstitution [2] to put an end to this period of living alone or in a single-parent situation. However, and this is undoubtedly linked to the fact that “recomposing” seems to be the opposite of “breaking up
It is certainly no longer a question of negotiating (your fridge, mine the washing machine) to relocate at the lowest cost. The perspective is quite different in fact: it is a question of making the most of one’s furniture, if one wants it to have a place in the new domestic space. The problem of the “same”, or if one prefers the “double” (two gas cookers, two sofas, etc.), immediately requires spouses to make choices. It is in fact hardly conceivable to accommodate all of the furniture of both spouses. Furthermore, in addition to the potential crampedness of the accommodation, recomposing a family means having two lines of family cohabit in the same domestic space. Yet because of this very specificity, the feeling that one is cramped often emerges in these families, even if there is not objectively over-occupancy of the accommodation (Le Gall, Martin, 1991). A phenomenon that hardly encourages us to “saturate” domestic space with useless furniture. And beyond that, recomposing also means trying to reconcile two practices of living, two conceptions of intimacy.
It is no longer the standardized space of housing that defines standardized furnishings, it is the furnishings that define the space” (1989, 183). Studies, professional mobility, the increase in union breakups, followed by one or more other unions, force us today into a certain residential mobility. A happy or tragic moment in relation to what motivates it, moving is now part of our lives. Which is not without repercussions, because when “it becomes more frequent, it is the furniture that becomes ‘real estate’ and the building, in a way, that mobilizes” (ibid.) . In other words, the furniture becomes a “reference point”. A familiar landmark which, along with many other objects, promotes adaptation to a new space, but also, for these reconstituted families, marital and family integration.
Faced from the outset when they settle in with this delicate problem of the double, which strictly speaking forces not to share (Who keeps what?), but more painfully perhaps, to select (What do we keep?), how do the spouses proceed? What arguments do they put forward? Is one of the two more legitimate to make their arguments heard? One thing is certain, we must decide. But “conservation” is implicitly the election, or at least the legitimization of a type of relationship to domestic space, and “non-selection”, more than a simple “rejection”, the invalidation of a conception of domestic intimacy. We therefore propose here a freeze frame on this “decisive moment”, a blind spot in the process of family recomposition which commits the future, as much with regard to the conception of living and the use of domestic space as to marital and family integration.
The mode of entry into cohabitation: aggregation or moving in?
Before even considering how the selection of the “double” is carried out, it is necessary to distinguish between the two possible forms of family settlement. Either one spouse goes to live with the other (aggregation), or the two spouses take a new home together (moving in).
In working-class and lower-middle-class circles, the new family readily moves into the home of one of the spouses. This is particularly the case when one is a custodial parent [4] and the other is a non-custodial parent or childless parent. However, it is almost always the home of the custodial parent, in other words that of the custodial mother, with more than 8 out of 10 children living primarily with their mother following their parents’ divorce. And everything happens as if the situation imposed itself.
(Martine, div., 38 years old, 3 children, nursing assistant) [5]
Since the home of a single-parent household is generally the most spacious, it seems logical to move there. In these environments, moving into a new home is rarely considered, as getting back together is often an opportunity to economically re-stabilize the precarious situation of women raising their children alone (Neyrand, Rossi, 2004). So, why take “bigger” when the new partner can join an already established family? This is all the more so since it seems legitimate in these environments that the prerogatives linked to domestic management fall under the supposed gender role of the woman (Schwarz, 1990) who, moreover, is here the custodial mother. This is how Pierre (divorced, 40 years old, storekeeper), Martine’s new partner, came to live with her, his son occupying every other weekend the brand new sofa bed in the living room, which is also the couple’s very first furniture purchase.
Although apparently less popular among the middle and upper classes, aggregation is nevertheless sometimes retained when the custodial mother is a homeowner or when a certain weariness inherent in excessive previous residential mobility is felt. But in the latter case, the new spouse almost never has children.
“My son and I spent a good part of our lives moving around […]. We had been here for two years, we had gotten used to it. So rather than taking a new apartment, it was easier for him to come and live with us.”
It is true that moving is always an ordeal of abandonment: of objects, walls, a neighborhood, neighbors, shopkeepers, which explains, according to some psychoanalysts, why the fatigue experienced during a move is much greater than the efforts made (Eiguer, 2004). We can therefore understand that Catherine, whose trajectory has been punctuated by numerous moves, refuses, even to live as a couple again, to consider a new “uprooting.”
It is not uncommon, however, for aggregation to be the result of a strategy to minimise the risks associated with family recomposition; a strategy which, however, does not immediately appear as such.
“My house is next to the college. I wanted my children to stay there. Then they developed nice relationships with the neighborhood, so putting them back in a situation of imbalance…”
(Sylvie, div., 36 years old, lives with Jean, 34 years old, teacher, single.)
The theme of uprooting, which would be detrimental to the children’s balance, is once again emerging. But beyond that, and expressed in various forms, the argument of preserving children is not unrelated to the fear that they will not accept the newcomer and/or that the latter will not be “up to par”. However, for mothers who are guardians of the middle and upper classes, there is no question of sacrificing their children to their desire to live as a couple again.
“I really loved him, it was love. On his side, I think it was the same thing. But I didn’t know how he was going to manage on a daily basis with the children […]. So I told him: ‘If the children don’t accept you, you can take back your place’.”
(Catherine, div., 39 years old, nurse, 3 children)
In these social environments, where the non-custodial father most often assumes his role as parent, the new spouse is expected to fit into the family situation without disrupting it, and therefore “find his place” without encroaching on the prerogatives of the other actors. He must then, by avoiding the available reference points (parent, friend), invest in a new role similar to what we have called “friendly sponsorship”, that is to say “a new bond certainly, but which seems to gradually have the right of citizenship within post-divorce families that are organized in a sustainable manner, perhaps precisely because these step-parents have an educational role (socialization, protection) that does not compete (supplement) with the functions assigned to kinship in this area” (Le Gall, 1992). Aggregation therefore appears to be a deliberate strategy of custodial mothers to test the possibilities of a new life as a couple and to assess the capacity of their new partner to be a “good” step-parent, without having to also include the risks linked to housing.