Published January 22, 2026 · Updated September 26, 2026
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If you are a mother looking for somewhere to live sober with your children, you need a straight answer before you get your hopes up.
Children cannot live in our houses. Eudaimonia runs men's houses and women's houses, and every room is a shared adult room. We do not have family units, and neither do most sober living homes anywhere in the country. Until today one of our own pages said otherwise, and it was wrong. We have corrected it.
Housing that takes mothers with their children does exist. It is a different kind of program, it is scarcer, and it is worth knowing how to look for it. It is also worth knowing what your options are if you cannot find one in time.
Why don't sober living homes take children?
It comes down to what the building is and what the license covers.
A sober living home is shared adult housing: bedrooms with two or three unrelated adults in them, shared bathrooms, a shared kitchen. There is no private family space to put a child in, and no arrangement for anyone to be responsible for a child when a parent is at work or at a meeting.
Housing children also changes what a residence legally is. Programs that take parents and children are set up for it from the start: separate family rooms, childcare arrangements, staff, and a different set of regulatory requirements. It is not something an ordinary sober house can add.
So when a home says it does not take children, it is not a judgement about you as a parent. It is a description of the building.
What does family-inclusive recovery housing actually look like?
It is a real category, and it is worth searching for by its right name. Programs vary enormously, but the ones that genuinely house parents with children usually have most of the following:
- A private room or apartment for you and your children, rather than a shared adult bedroom
- An age limit, and often a limit on how many children
- A childcare arrangement, or a requirement that you have one
- A waiting list, because there are far fewer of these than there is demand
The useful search terms are "family recovery housing", "residential treatment with children" and "women and children program" Alongside your city or state, not "sober living", which will mostly return houses like ours that cannot take your children.
findtreatment.gov, the federal treatment locator, lets you filter for programs that accept clients with children. Your state's substance use agency usually keeps a list too, and a hospital social worker or a treatment center's discharge planner will often know what is actually open locally this month, which no directory does.
Inside Rustic Creek, our Austin flagship
What if there isn't one available?
This is where most mothers actually end up, and it is the hardest part of the decision, so it is worth naming plainly rather than skirting.
The usual arrangement is that the children stay with a parent, grandparent or another trusted adult while you do a stretch in housing that can take you, and you see them under whatever arrangement you have. It is not what anybody wants. It is also, for a lot of women, the thing that made the difference, and it is a temporary arrangement made deliberately, which is a different thing from what happens when nothing is arranged at all.
Nobody can tell you whether that trade is right for your family. What we can say is that it is the decision most mothers in this position are weighing, that you are not unusual for weighing it, and that it is worth talking through with someone who knows your circumstances rather than working it out alone at two in the morning.
If you are looking at housing for yourself
Our women's houses are open to you, for you, not for you and your children. That is the honest limit of what we offer.
What they are is a drug- and alcohol-free house with other women in recovery, a structure, testing, and a requirement that you work, study or volunteer. You can read every commitment a resident signs before you go any further, and what the house rules cover if you want the detail.
Visitation happens within set hours, and what that means for seeing your children is a question worth asking admissions directly and early, the answer depends on the house.
Start from the city you want: our women's houses and location pages carry their own numbers and current availability. Or apply online. Say on the first call that you have children, so nobody wastes your time.
