Competing Visions of the American Single-Family Home

Abstract

The single-family home is a critical part of the American Dream, and there has been a long conversation about what houses mean and symbolize. As American homes have grown larger, some of these newer homes have been called McMansions. This study examines the use of this term in the New York Times and Dallas Morning News between 2000 and 2009 and shows that McMansion is a complex term with four distinct meanings: a large house, a relatively large house, a home flawed in architecture or design, and a symbol for more complex issues including sprawl and excessive consumption. The author argues that the usage and meaning of the term differs by metropolitan context, suggesting there may not be a singular national process of “mansionization,” and provides three suggestions for the future study of McMansions.