Living arrangements in 20th-century America have been geared to the idealized monogamous nuclear family: a mother, father, and a few children. However, this residential pattern is changing. With the rise in the divorce rate, there are now many single-parent households, usually consisting of women and their children. There are also a large number of blended families, in which divorced adults who have remarried have brought together children from earlier marriages; singles living together; group and shared homes for the elderly; single or divorced older children returning to live with one or both parents; poor and elderly occupants of single rooms in public facilities; and homeless people and families living in shelters. Although the housing stock continues to be designed for the traditional monogamous nuclear family, changes are afoot, with proposed new residential designs for different family configurations, such as suite arrangements for single-parent families that provide separate and common spaces (for a variety of design alternatives see Franck and Ahrentzen, 1989).

What about contemporary Mormon plural families? Do they live in communal arrangements, with wives sharing dwellings? If so, how do they arrange space and share various parts of homes. If they live apart, in a dyadic arrangement, how do they manage to function as a unified family? And do plural families maintain the same living arrangements permanently, or do they shift from dyadic to communal to dyadic configurations from one time to another? These are the questions we address in the present chapter.