Week 11 Tute: Norms shift with life stage

Week 11, the same household's rules, renegotiated as the people in it change

10 May 2027

A share house of four strangers in first year runs on different rules than the same four people two years later, once they’re friends rather than flatmates of convenience, and different rules again once one of them moves in with a partner. Take a household where one person trains karate most evenings: as strangers, that’s a scheduling problem to be managed around; a year later, once everyone actually knows and trusts each other, it’s just “that’s when Sam trains,” folded into the house’s rhythm without anyone renegotiating anything out loud. The rule didn’t change; the relationship underneath it did, and that’s what actually moved the norm.

Before the session#

Take one norm from earlier in the semester and trace how it would look different for people who just met versus people who’ve lived together for years, or for a household in early adulthood versus one much further into adult life.

In the session#

We build a small map of which norms are load-bearing (they’d break the household if renegotiated badly) and which are cosmetic (they change easily and nobody minds).

Afterwards#

Bring this sense of “what actually needs renegotiating, and what doesn’t” into the final assessment: a redesign that ignores relationship history usually ignores the real problem.