Birdnesting: meet the Londoners still sharing a home with their exes keep their family together after divorce
With 42 per cent of marriages now ending in divorce, “Birdnesting” — when a separated couple maintains one family home and another smaller house or flat, which they can swap into when it’s not their turn with the children — is becoming increasingly popular with parents wanting to minimise the disruption of a split.
“My ex-husband and I maintain one family household for our children’s stability, but it’s not quite the traditional ‘nesting’ one understands,” says Farhana Hussain.
The 46-year-old and her ex-husband put their own spin on the birdnesting trend after divorcing in 2020: “I was against a ‘nesting’ arrangement, where you swap houses, as I didn’t want to go and stay in his house.”
Instead, the SEN co-ordinator turned divorce doula lives with her three teenage sons in a family house, in Tonbridge, Kent,
