“I think the hardest days were days that I was sick or just exhausted, burnt out, and I still had to get up and get this child ready to get out and about. I just didn’t have a day off,” she said.

The apartment was used as a playground, and soon neighbours lost patience.

“They eventually got really annoyed with us — which is understandable. It was all very mutually joyous when we moved out.”

A new norm for raising a family in cities

As of 2020, the average size of new houses in Australia was 230 square metres, while apartments were about 69 per cent lower, at 136 square metres, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and CommSec.

Apartment living is on the rise in Australia. Source: SBS

Population density is increasing in every Australian capital city, with about a 40 per cent rise since 2003, according to 2024 CoreLogic data.

“I couldn’t even imagine having my three-year-old in an apartment anymore. No way in hell.”

Apartment living was the end of Aniruddh’s relationship

“Housing was one of our biggest concerns — we just couldn’t raise another child in an apartment,” Aniruddh told The Feed.

Having grown up in India, Aniruddh said he was used to high-density living — but his partner, raised with a backyard with a pool in coastal regional Australia — was not; and the pair couldn’t see eye-to-eye on the lifestyle.

Living in high-density with his partner was the catalyst for Aniruddh Haldar’s relationship breakdown. Source: Supplied

“She struggled to adjust her expectations in terms of space and storage … but I didn’t really know any different,” he said.

But high-density living is something more families may have to adapt to.

A generation raised in free-standing houses

“There’s really strong ingrained cultural attitudes around home ownership in Australia … most of the contemporary generation have grown up in freestanding houses. So to some degree, people are replicating their own experience,” Cook told The Feed.

Of 1012 people who answered The Feed’s Instagram poll, 952 reported being raised in a house rather than an apartment. Source: SBS

Many people in Australia before the housing crisis were raised in a freestanding house with a yard, and parents often wish to replicate their childhood experiences.

But many Australian apartment designs fail to meet the needs of families, according to research analysing norms and parents’ experiences of home in higher-density housing, published in 2021 in Housing Studies, an international research journal focusing on housing development and policy.

High-density living is nothing new in countries such as India, China, Singapore, South Korea, England and France. Some cities in these countries have innovated through high-density living: Seoul redeveloped a highway overpass in a high-density area to provide a public recreational space, while some of Singapore’s schools are open to the public after hours, giving parents extra space to take their children.

When the noise is too much

“Me and my wife got anxious when our kid ran around, so we had to move out,” Ramil said.

The Western Sydney Local Health District pointed out in its Healthy Higher Density Living for Families with Children design guide last year that, despite more children being raised in high-density homes, no Australian city has implemented a policy for family-friendly living standards.

Australian families raising families are flocking to apartments as cheaper alternatives to freestanding houses. Source: SBS / Kathleen Farmilo

Meanwhile, Aniruddh believes apartments in Australia aren’t built with families in mind.

“Apartment living is the future … but if you want to make people live in [an] apartment you need to make them liveable.”