The Home Funeral Movement: What It Is and Why It's Growing

What Families Did for Centuries

Until the Civil War era, American families washed, dressed, and buried their own dead. There was no funeral industry. The local carpenter built a casket. Women in the community prepared the body. The vigil happened in the family parlor — which is how "funeral parlor" got its name.

Commercial embalming emerged during the Civil War as a battlefield necessity for transporting soldiers home. By the early 1900s, funeral directing had professionalized, and by mid-century, most Americans had never seen a body outside a funeral home's care. A practice that was universal for thousands of years became unfamiliar within two generations.

The Modern Home Funeral Movement

The home funeral movement is the organized effort to return body care, vigil keeping, and funeral direction to families who want to handle these things themselves.

It isn't anti-funeral-director. It's pro-choice in the most literal sense — families should know they have the legal right to care for their own dead and can exercise that right if they choose to.

The movement gained momentum in the late 1990s and early 2000s, driven by three forces:

The green burial movement. Environmental concerns about embalming chemicals (formaldehyde is a known carcinogen), metal caskets, and concrete vaults led people to seek natural alternatives. Home funerals naturally align with green burial — no embalming, biodegradable containers, minimal resource consumption.

Consumer advocacy. The Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA) had been fighting predatory pricing and upselling practices in the funeral industry since the 1960s. The FTC Funeral Rule of 1984 gave families the legal right to decline embalming and supply their own caskets. These protections laid the groundwork for families to take over the entire process.

The death positive movement. Popularized by mortician and author Caitlin Doughty and organizations like The Order of the Good Death, this cultural shift encourages open conversation about death, dying, and body disposition. It frames death as a natural process rather than a medical event to be outsourced.

Key Organizations

The National Home Funeral Alliance (NHFA) is the primary national organization supporting family-directed funerals. Founded in 2010, it provides state-by-state legal guides, educational resources, and a directory of home funeral guides, death doulas, and supportive funeral directors. Their work has been instrumental in clarifying the legal landscape for families.

The Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA) focuses on consumer rights within the commercial funeral system — pricing transparency, the FTC Funeral Rule, and protecting families from high-pressure sales. They're not specifically a home funeral organization, but their advocacy gives families the legal tools to direct their own arrangements.

INELDA and NEDA (International End of Life Doula Association and National End-of-Life Doula Alliance) train and certify death doulas who often specialize in home funeral support.

What the Numbers Show

No central database tracks home funerals, so precise statistics are hard to come by. But the indicators point in one direction:

• NHFA membership and resource downloads have grown steadily since the organization's founding
• Death doula training programs have expanded from a handful to dozens of certified programs across North America
• Green and natural burial cemeteries have increased from fewer than a dozen in 2005 to over 300 today
• Google search volume for "home funeral" and related terms has climbed year over year

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated interest significantly. Funeral home restrictions — limited attendance, no-touch policies, delayed services — pushed families to explore alternatives. Some discovered that caring for their dead at home wasn't just a workaround but a profoundly meaningful experience.

What a Home Funeral Looks Like Today

A modern home funeral typically involves keeping the body at home for one to three days using non-chemical cooling (dry ice or polymer sheets), washing and dressing the body as a family, hosting a vigil in the living room or bedroom, and then arranging transport to a crematory, natural burial ground, or — where legal — a burial on private land.

It can be entirely family-directed, supported by a death doula, or managed in partnership with a funeral director who handles only the required legal filings while the family does everything else.

For families ready to explore this path, a step-by-step family-directed care guide covers the legal requirements, body care procedures, cooling protocols, vigil planning, and transport logistics from start to finish.