Reading government and industry reports can leave me wondering where the individual is. The primacy of the family, and the subset of ‘the hardworking family’ is something that I’ve long noticed. Perhaps because I’ve spent lots of time as a single person it’s something I am more primed to see than people who have been in a relationship for years. This framing made me wonder how representative the representation is and why it might have been chosen.

Reading ‘The Warm Homes Plan’, families get mention after mention – albeit in amongst some more general references to people or tenants. Still though, four references in one paragraph doesn’t happen by accident I think. Linguistically it creates a sense of intended repetition that even just twice might not. From a logistical perspective, the amount of times that document would have gone through a review process makes it harder to imagine it was accidental. Of course things can slip through if the version control gets a bit messy and there are twin or more track reviews happening. Putting together those kinds of documents isn’t always as elegant a process as we might want to imagine yet the fact I noticed it in that document was a reflection of that longer-held awareness of how often the term is used.

Looking at the Office of National Statistics (ONS) information published in 2025 – the most recent year statistics are available for – shows that while it’s true that 66.8% of households are a family, there are now 29.5% of households where only one person lives in the home. By way of completeness 2.8% of households are where two or more unrelated people live together and multi-family homes make up 0.8% of homes. The ONS notes that the figure for single-person households is a similar proportion to the previous census, there are now more young adults aged 20-34 years old who are living with their parents.

To leave out c.33% of the population from language around who is important, to be emphathised with or needs to be supported feels odd. I assume the references don’t mean family in the sense of connections to people that you might be related to but no longer living with. Apart from anything else if that is what is meant it feels a bit garbled and unclear, and the context doesn’t suggest that is the intention. It isn’t as though there isn’t language available instead – why not just say everyone deserves x?

The use of this language can be seen as a way to try and engage people. Some of it might be about trying to head off arguments at the pass, particularly from more right-wing media and politicians for whom the family can be a key focus. There can be something respectful about going to where people are which resonates with them and helps get them on-board. This can also be a sign of pragmatism, changing the language to get things done and finding ways to go with the grain of how people might think about things

However, the danger in using language that way is that the argument is never made on its own terms, it accepts the framing of others. This creates a danger that the thing itself becomes obscured with the attendant risk that there can be an appearance of progress but later on down the line it becomes apparent you were talking at somewhat cross purposes. By reinforcing the framing rather than staking your own claim it can create the need for more of a rearguard action if the frame no longer fits the argument.

As such, the repeated choice of language around families does read as intentional. It comes across as language which seeks to be more collective and inclusive, rather than seeing people as atomised individuals. Yet the exclusionary nature of the language then serves to undermine that same intention. It is hard to see what value there is in choosing language in that context which doesn’t seek to cover the widest group of people possible. Other choices are available, so when they aren’t taken, it feels like a missed opportunity not to tell a more inclusive story.