Why don’t kids share bedrooms anymore? Why is it considered shocking or abusive to suggest that kids could share one?

[Anonymous]

My kids share by choice! I think it’s great

[Anonymous]

People are having less kids these days so they're able to get homes where everyone can have their own room. So it's just become expected that kids do. If I'm not mistaken, 4 bedrooms is the most common number of bedrooms in homes.

[Anonymous]

Houses are generally bigger these days so more people have additional bedrooms. People also have more STUFF, so having individual space is helpful. But plenty of my friends in 500k-800k homes have kids who share by choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mom gave up her bedroom and slept in the living room to enable me and my two siblings to each have our own room. This was growing up in the 80s. Everything depends, I guess. People make do with the space they have. If I had two boys, I'd have them share and think they'd enjoy sharing a room. With a boy and a girl, it's fine at younger ages, but not so much in older ages. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to share with my brother in my teens, nor he with me.

I grew up in a 2 bedroom farmhouse in the midwest. My 4 siblings and I (3 boys, 2 girls) shared one bedroom and our parents shared the other. It was fine. Would I have liked my own room, sure, but even if there were more bedrooms, I would have asked to share with one of my brothers rather than my sister. My sister and I have never gotten along whereas I was really close to a younger brother and would have happily shared a room with just him.

We also only had one bathroom...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why don't yours? Lots of reasons including we have enough bedrooms per kid as we don't have more kids than we can house. Some kids do better with personal space. Some kids are playmates and will play vs. sleep. And, because we can. Why do you care?

Bless your heart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids share a room. We live in a 4 br house but have 2 home offices taking up 2 of the bedrooms.

This seems pretty selfish.

We don't have this situation, but as a person who works from home and is there most hours of the day, it irritates me at times that I share a bedroom and my tween/teen have their own rooms while I work in the dining room

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why don't yours? Lots of reasons including we have enough bedrooms per kid as we don't have more kids than we can house. Some kids do better with personal space. Some kids are playmates and will play vs. sleep. And, because we can. Why do you care?

Lol. My dad grew up in an Irish Catholic family in the 60s & 70s. 9 kids in the family. Large age gaps, but there were definitely periods of 3-4 kids per bedroom.

[Anonymous]

Frankly, we bought a house that was too small thinking a) it was an upgrade from our apartment! and b) we'd move somewhere bigger when our kids were old enough to care ans our careers and incomes stabilized more. Housing prices and interest rates took off at a MUCH higher and faster rate than our incomes, so it doesn't look realistic for us right now. I do regret not stretching and taking more risk with the benefit of hindsight, I think my oldest would enjoy his own private space, but moving to a bigger house would almost triple our mortgage and that would severely impact our retirement and college savings.

[Anonymous]

Two of my kids share. I know other families with kids who share as well

[Anonymous]

I have 3 kids. Each has their own room however two sleep together in a room and the third has been camped out on my bedroom floor for as long as I can remember…

[Anonymous]

I have a boy (1) and a girl (3) and am starting to look for the home I fully expect us to live in until they go to college. We’re currently in a one bedroom apartment so obviously there’s a lot of sharing right now but I don’t want to force them to live together through puberty and beyond so I’m looking exclusively at houses with three or more bedrooms (my bedroom or the living room will double as my office). My kids will have their own rooms (if they want) from 3 and 5 not because I think 3 and 5 year olds need privacy, but because I think the 13 and 15 year olds they will become need privacy.

[Anonymous]

We have three kids, all the same sex. They share one room (1 bunk bed, 1 regular) and it's worked out just fine. The oldest will probably move to another room (that is currently a play space and guest bedroom) at some point in the next few years. However, we have had very few problems with them doing so. We have another room that is the study and a work from home space. We'd rather keep it that way. For a 4 BR, 3BA house, it works well for us. We bought our house as if we're going to live in it for the next 30-40 years. The nice thing is that we'll even be able to reclaim that space when they all go off the college!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have three kids, all the same sex. They share one room (1 bunk bed, 1 regular) and it's worked out just fine. The oldest will probably move to another room (that is currently a play space and guest bedroom) at some point in the next few years. However, we have had very few problems with them doing so. We have another room that is the study and a work from home space. We'd rather keep it that way. For a 4 BR, 3BA house, it works well for us. We bought our house as if we're going to live in it for the next 30-40 years. The nice thing is that we'll even be able to reclaim that space when they all go off the college!

PP. I should have mentioned. It's kind of silly that anyone finds this odd. If they don't share a room now, they certainly will when they go off to college.

[Anonymous]

Our kids shared a room for 10 years. I disagree with you OP, and think it's been a trend for several years now. I'm sure that with the rise of the home office, the trend will continue.

[Anonymous]

Because we have a boy and a girl.

But I'm confused by the new imperative to give each kid their own bathroom. The four of us share two bathrooms and it's fine.