I have- and saw them long before they were a thing. But they are very different from a dedicated space furnished with the latest in recliners with built-in refrigerators… They are basements or garages that still function as basements or garages but also have a fairly large screen TV and the old living room furniture. And they mostly exist not so much because the men want a way to get away from the wimminfolk and their candles and doilies, but because the rest of the family doesn’t want a screaming man in the living room for however many hours it takes to watch every sport available
That’s not a man cave. It’s just a rec room.
Maybe- but the people who have them call them man caves, and my understanding of “rec room” is that they are used by the whole family for parties, children having friends over, etc. Not exclusively by the men. The rooms I’m speaking of are not suitable for parties or children playing and they are exclusively used by the men.I’m talking about the “more modest demographic” that **WhyNot ** mentioned, that doesn’t have extra rooms or money to buy the latest in comfy chairs. Their man caves aren’t going to be exactly like the ones in the 4000 sq foot house any more than their kitchens or living rooms are.
This. My house is not what it would be if I was on my own. And either way there are not a lot of doilies, who has doilies?
Hm, interesting, in my experience a basement TV room IS also used for teens to host their friends; particularly for “watching a movie” with your fella, aka “making out.”
But yes, being the exclusive domain of the male of the household would render it a man cave in spirit, if not in decor.
I guess I’ve misused the word here. I’m referring to a place that’s largely the domain of the male, where many of the traditional rules regarding furniture, carpets, coasters, etc. are suspended. In the majority of cases I’m familiar with, this retreat is NOT a part of the house. I’m not sure what the name should be for it, other than a retreat.
Call BS if you like. But that’s pretty much how I view it. All the rules, cleanliness standards, and limitations in the house were not imposed by me. And I (and the friends I’ve referred to) occasionally want a break from it. There are strict limitations on behavior, activities, conversations, and neatness at work. There are lesser but still strictly enforced limitations on how I live at home. And most of us* have a place where the rules are even *more *relaxed, so that we can as well.
*in my circle
As WhyNot said it sounds like “man cave” is a marketing invention, not a set thing with right or wrong definitions. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve even heard the phrase.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s yet another Boomer thing. All the kids have left the house, making the rec room up for grabs. Let Mama have her HDTV in the living room. Daddy will set up shop in the basement, so he can watch the Superbowl…after he gets down tinkering in the garage or in the toolshed…and before he checks his email his study.
I can’t imagine an average family of four in an average suburban rancher having the luxury of an indoor man cave. At least Mama’s sewing room usually doubles as a spare guest room and where everyone irons their clothes.
Ah, reality and tv - so different. Often that being the laughing point of sitcoms. The reality of my growing-up years (mid-80s through late-90s for the parts I can really remember) was much more like - Dad gets gets the big tv in the living room for football and mom uses the small one in the master bedroom. Often while folding clothes on the bed. And if there was a kids-welcome party (or just weekend afternoons with at the home of relatives with a pool), Mom did all the childcare while Dad kicked back and relaxed. Dads were the heavier drinkers at NY’s Eve parties, too, while Moms drank less and watched the kids. And all the Moms I knew worked. I understand that’s changed some now, though.
Decorating - no idea who did that. When my parents redecorated, they did it together, and the first time I was old enough to remember the only family close enough to me to know redecorating, their daughter (college-aged, at the time, I think) picked out their colors. A blanket across the top of the couch was as likely to be present as not. None of the living rooms I visited had any pillows on the couches except the ones that came with the couch. And eating in the living room was the norm for snacks or for meals when there were 20+ people present. I don’t think I knew anyone with real cut flowers inside, either. There were few potted plants.
There was no man-cave in any of these homes at that time. The man could eat what he wanted and watch what he wanted in the living room. Tools did stay outside in the garage or shop. Anyone who had deer heads mounted would have them in the living room.
First time I heard the word man-cave, I was in one. A friend had turned the mechanical room of the house into what he described as a man-cave. It looked like it was a place for the men to tell lies, smoke cigars and fart.
So why do you feel women becoming higher-earning will lead to women wanting such a retreat?
I think the point is that just because they aren’t exactly the standards and practices you’d chose, if given entirely free rein, doesn’t mean that they are the standards and practices your wife has chosen, either. She may well also be making a lot of compromises, but you are interpreting anything less than your exact preferences as her getting her way. That’s a frustrating standard for the woman, because she can’t win: getting anything her way is accepting the mantle of controlling harpy.
And, in any case, if you were single, would you really extend your man-cave practices to your entire house? I can’t think of a single upper-middle class, late-middle aged man I know who keeps his whole house like a “mancave”. He might still have a mancave, but he doesn’t live like that everywhere.
Perhaps the man-cave is a place for men to drop age and class, rather like a hunting camp. I hadn’t thought of it, but really…it kind of is. Playing pool, smoking cigars, playing poker – all things not done in front of ladies, normally.
Well, the guys I know don’t. YMMV.
Also, Tzigone – that’s a class distinction. My ex’s parents house was exactly as the houses you described. Nice people, solid jobs, but definitely lower-middle-class. My dad’s and stepmum’s house was…not. Cut flowers (obviously we wouldn’t have fake flowers), real plants, NO paneling, no tweed sofas, lots of books, real antiques, silver you inherited, and so on. If the man of the house hunted, he *might *have had deer heads in the den…or in the garage.
There was a dividing line between people who re-finished beat-up wood floors and those who covered them with wall-to-wall carpet.
Required reading: A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf.
It’s weird. My current duvet is a Jacobean floral made by Waverly. The colours aren’t overly girly, and the room isn’t terribly girly otherwise (I have plain dark curtains and a plain dark tufted headboard).
But when the intended and I were talking about a new duvet, I said, we can get one that’s less feminine if you don’t want to sleep under flowers.
I nearly fell over when he said “We don’t need a new one! I think the one you have is pretty!”
Some guys don’t care. And some do. And some women want goopy fluffy frilly crap all over everything. And some don’t.
I like Infovore’s description of a nerd cave a lot. 
Call that if you like - monetarily we were middle-middle to upper-middle class (but class is way more than money, I acknowledge). But southern and rural.
Yeah, the different elements that make up class level make it a strange and slippery conversation to have, because everyone isn’t always on the same page.
But I know what you mean; I grew up in the south as well.
Maybe you don’t know anyone who keeps his house like that, but I do - my 47 year old “I’m a bachelor, baby!” brother-in-law keeps his whole house like that.
I’ve only encountered it in the past 4-5 years, as we’ve started making friends with the parents of the Firebug’s friends. Since he’s 7, we’re not talking Boomers here - except for me, of course - but mostly couples in their 30s or early 40s. But a lot of them are in much larger houses than my wife and I grew up in, or even that we’re in now - places with 3000-3500 square feet of space. (That’s the way they’re building them now.) So they have room for man caves in addition to all the usual stuff. (ETA:) It’s not that the kids have moved out and left a lot of surplus space; the kids are elementary-school age, and there’s still a lot of surplus space.
I almost replied to pullin with something like this, but I got interrupted. I’m like this; my office is an untidy, messy mess. I like it that way, and between Mr. Athena and I, there’s no question I’m the untidier one. But I don’t want my whole house to look like my office.
And yes, not all men are cave-dwelling beast who don’t give two shits about how their house looks. Mr. Athena does more of our decorating (not that we have an overly “decorated” house, but what we have, he does.) He’s the one who looks at furniture and carpeting and such and decides what kind we’re getting and what goes there. I’m involved, and I like it, but I generally bow to his judgement because of the two of us, he’s more into it.
Really, I don’t know that it’s a man/woman thing at all. Some people care about things like home decorating and keeping things neat & tidy and some don’t. I know a lot of women whose homes look like a college dorm, even though the family makes decent money and there’s no real reason why they couldn’t make it look more decorated or neater if they wanted. But they don’t. I also know more than a few guys who have nicely decorated, tidy homes. Honestly, aside from a home being outright dirty to the point of unhealthiness or safety concerns, who cares? People get to do what they want in their homes.
What I do find odd are the guys who lament that their homes belong to their wives and they get no say and they need a MAN CAVE otherwise they’ll be miserable and covered in doilies. Really, guys? You’re either married to a controlling harpy, or you are complicit with how your life and home evolved. If you don’t like it, change it or shut up. I suspect that a lot of guys when it comes right down to it enjoy having a nice house and some space to themselves as well (I know I do, and I’m not a guy, and Mr. Athena does as well.)
An office? Maybe. I think that some guys have their office in their man cave, or have turned their home office into one. A garage? Maybe if it’s got a heater for the wintertime, and the furniture that used to be in the living room before it got too beat up.
My basement workshop has too much space to heat, but if I tried to fit comfy furniture in there, there’d be no room for it to be a workshop. And it is very much a functioning workshop; every room in our house excepting the bathrooms has furniture I’ve built. (My bookcases are designed around the books we have, and in addition to looking good, they’re a thing of beauty in terms of efficient use of space to hold our metric shitload of books.)
But it’s not a man cave, because there’s nowhere to hang out there; hell, there’s nowhere even to sit, really, other than on the workbench, and it’s really kinda chilly most of the year if you’re not keeping busy. It’s where I go when something needs to be built or fixed, or something needs to be taken out of the storage space I’ve built down there, or put back there. (Like the Christmas tree and ornaments, after we take the ornaments off the tree tomorrow.) And when I’m done and have put the tools away and cleaned up the sawdust, I come back up to the comfortable parts of the house.
Yup.