I shared a room with my 3-yrs older sister until I was seven, that was the year we moved to a different city than the one in which I was born. Two bedrooms up, two bedrooms down. My sister and I were upstairs in separate rooms, our new baby brother downstairs in the room next to our parents room.

I had a twin sister so the answer is yes. My whole childhood until we went to college, different ones.

No. Only child. I also married an 'only', so sharing a bed was new to both of us -- except for college. (I remember being grateful DH didn't snore!)

At what age do you think it inappropriate for different-gender children to share a bed -- or a room? (This came up recently in an advice column.) Let's assume there is room to split them up.

I also had a twin sister and we shared a double bed till she got married at 16 and moved out. Than at 18 she moved back in...but with a baby then so she got to have a room for the 2 of them. I loved, loved, loved having my own room.

No, we had our own rooms.

I had my own room. My 2 brothers shared a room & resented that I had my own. The advantage of being the youngest & only girl. :)

I lived in a large old brick house with six bedrooms upstairs (three of them had built-in closets) when I was young - one room for grandma, one for dad and one for the hired couple, but a couple of us three boys shared a room, and a double bed.

When we moved to share-crop with a small house in Saskatchewan, there were two bedrooms, so Grandma had one and Dad and three boys shared two double beds in the other - there was a closet and, as I recall, one dresser.

I don't remember there being major squabbles ... and I don't remember where we stored our clothes!

Memory getting shot, I guess ... but what does one expect, with advanced age?

ole joyful

No. I wasn't an only, but my sister was married and my brothers in the military by the time I was born.

chisue, you asked "At what age do you think it inappropriate for different-gender children to share a bed -- or a room? (This came up recently in an advice column.) Let's assume there is room to split them up."

Well if there was a bedroom for each, I would have put them in separate rooms to begin with, just so each could have a room decorated in a style/colours that appealed to their own taste. I would not have opposite gender siblings in the same bed once the oldest was about six, if a male and maybe 7 if a female, if the boy was younger than 6. I know that sounds sexist but I think one hears of far more males who might begin sexual exploration with another, at a younger age, than a female would do the same.

I really wouldn't have them in the same room any longer either. I know that many many families have to have older siblings share space, because they are living in conditions unlike those of us who don't have more children than we have room for, which is obviously the best scenario.

In my own childhood, we had a family of 7 in a 3 bedroom house. Parents had one room, my (1 year older) sister and I shared a room and our little sister had the 3rd bedroom. When our younger brother was born, he got her room and us 3 girls were cramped in one room. When Mom was pregnant with her 5th child, our parents had a handyman neighbour convert our attic into a long bedroom with a dormer window on one end and regular window on the other.

Once our baby brother was born, he got the small room and older brother got his own room, while us 3 girls moved upstairs into a nice 'attic' bedroom that could easily hold our 3 twin beds. This worked well for us, as the 3 girls got along much better than our 2 brothers, who had totally opposite tastes and personalities.

No. I was the oldest and then had 2 brothers so they shared a room.

No. Only child.

I went from a basic childhood to a very different lifestyle as an adult. Ten of us (8 children, 2 parents) lived in a two room house, which became one room during the winter as it was too expensive to heat the other room. No electricity and no plumbing, water drawn from a well and wood cut and split for fuel. So no, I didn't have my own room as a child! Coming from a large family in crowded circumstances, I relish peace and quiet now. Perhaps I became such a book lover because it was virtually the only entertainment available and tie to the larger world.

I shared with my older sister until she started high school. Her morning alarm woke me up too early, so I begged mom to let me sleep in the tiny 4th bedroom. Looking back, my mom really loved me -- she had been using that extra space for all sorts of storage, but she gave up her convenience for me :-)

Ten people living in one room? Or even two rooms but with no electricity or running water? Yikes, that's about as basic as it gets.

Stacy, I would like to hear more about your childhood and your career path. You started life with extraordinary circumstances.

No. I only have one brother, 7 years younger. So we slept separately except early on at motel or hotel stays, where we'd share rooms. (He would sleep walk, or rather more accurately, sleep-swim in his bed.)

Bro and I shared the bathroom, it was NOT a Jack and Jill, and in fact in one or two homes it was also the guest bathroom. (Parents entertained often, so it was always neat and clean.) Never a problem!

5 girls and we sure did. We had a 3 Bedroom 1500 sf California Ranch for a family of five. My older sister had her own room and I shared with my younger sister until baby #4 was born, then the baby got her own room and 3 of us girls shared a room. I'll never forget the Navy bunks Dad brought home from the Navy yard he worked at. He painted them along with 3 dressers fun colors (Orange & Yellow, It was the 60's after all!) and tried to make the room as girly as possible. Since our older sister was giving up her own bedroom, she got to pick which bed she wanted first. Then our Mom wouldn't let my younger sibling sleep higher up, so I got stuck with the top bunk. I really didn't like it because the heat vent was not to far from me and it was so hot. A couple of years after baby 5 was born, our parents put an addition on the back of the house turning it into a much larger 5 bdrm, 3 bath home. That's when we 3 older girls each got our own rooms and the two younger girls had to share.

My sister is only 23 months younger, so we shared a room and a double bed until I went away to college at 17. We didn't always get along , which made it difficult. My brother was an "oops" baby and the office was converted into a BR for him.

We had 1 and 1/2 baths, so it was hectic if we all had to get ready at the same time.

Only girl so I had my own room. I was spoiled!

I remember my brother and I sharing a room, using bunk beds. I liked to push his mattress up with my feet to bug him.

As a young child our whole family slept in the same room which had a double bed, bunk beds and a crib.

When we got our own house it was a 3 bedroom so I had my own room and my 2 brothers shared a room.

No but I really wanted to so I would sneak into my sister's room and crawl into the bed with her all the time. She was always nice about it. She's several years older so I'm sure i was very annoying.

eld6161 - it would take a book to describe my life lol! So as not to hijack this thread, fast forwarding to the latter part of my life - I moved to another city for almost two years to obtain my Masters degree in Library Science (University of British Columbia). I was fortunate to work in libraries for several years after that.

Thanks everyone. :) I'm a mother's helper among other duties for one of my clients. Her 3 and 5 year old boy and girl share a room. They have bunk beds and get along most of the time. It's a small house. Occasionally they have to be separated. The oldest goes into mommy and daddy's bed until the youngest falls asleep. It is harder to fall asleep when with noisier room mates. :) I think I was the noisy one.

No, only child. But my son and daughter shared a room until she was 7 and he was 9 and she kicked him out as she wanted her own room to be with "just girls" when her friends came over. That same DD has two sons and lives in a 4 BR house. Her boys have shared a room since the youngest was 2 and could go into a "big boy" bed. Younger son dreads the thought of his brother going away to college in a year. They're very different boys but very close and adore one another.

DS married a woman who believed that every child needs his own room and own bath. They are now divorced and when he has the children, they share a loft (it has real stairs) with twin beds, each in a kind of alcove. DGD hates sharing the one bath in the apt with her father and brother. DS has no intention of paying $1500 a month more for a 2 bath apt. She can learn to be a little flexible.

I'm a great believer in children sharing rooms. It was hard as an "only" to have a roommate in college or in the hospital when I gave birth to my two babies. It did me no favors. If I lived in a huge house with a big 3rd floor, I'd do children in the English fashion - day nursery and night nursery with all together. It teaches children compromise and can help develop wonderful closeness.

I don't think the "English fashion" of raising children is anything to write home about. It's probably changing over time but based on four couples we know well - two here, two over there, in our age bracket (60-somethings now) and older, middle class, it was very hands off from a parental involvement and guidance standpoint and with results you would expect. They did that because that was how they were treated by their parents. I still remember one friend calling from over there, crying, because her husband insisted that their older son had reached the point (it might have been 8 years of age) when he "needed" to be sent to boarding school hundreds of miles away. "Oh, it's no problem" her husband told her, "we can go visit him in a month and then he'll be home for Christmas". And so that's what happened.

One English friend, who lives here, had a distant relationship with his own father and has a distant relationship with his own two sons. Cordial, but distant. He thinks it's normal. He hardly paid any attention to them when they were growing up (I know, I was there), just as it was for him with his own father. He wonders why I'm so close with my kids. Duh.

Yes indeedy, my sister and I shared a bedroom until one us left home. We lived in a small 4 room farm house and there were no other rooms. We had a kitchen, living room, and 2 small bedrooms. Mom and Pop got one bedroom and the kids shared the other one. You either shared the room or one of you slept outside in a shed or the barn and that did not work in any season. During the warmer weather, the mosquitos would eat you alive and during winter, it was too cold for comfort, so sharing was a necessity,

My daughter was an only and had no problems sharing a dorm room when she went to college and they remain friends today. I'd like to think I raised her to be mature enough to accommodate and be tolerant of others. Same for me when I was in the hospital when she was born. I was there for five days and had a couple of different room mates. And I was raised "an only". I am not wound so tightly that little things like that bother me.

No boarding school or full time nanny in lieu of parenting for us either, but people tend to repeat whatever patterns they experienced. Hands-on parenting is hard work! I have also seen some men who were sent away to board who didn't want to share their wives' attention with their own children.

I'm going to be indelicate here and ask about the lack of privacy for parents when *everybody* slept in one space. I've wondered about this when reading about early settlers living all together in a one-room cabin -- kids alongside sexually active parents.

There is only my sister and me. We did not even have a bedroom, we both slept in a pull out day bed what might be called now a family room. We only had 4 small rooms growing up and no bathroom at all inside. So yes we did share a room.

Sue

See "Decorating With Hay and Calsomine" here

I shared with my brothers until I was about 12 or so. I am the oldest, and when I was 12 I had three younger brothers and a sister. (My sister was 10 years younger than me.) My brothers shared a room, and for some reason I don't remember where my sister slept. My own room - what luxury!

That all changed when I was 16 and dad lost his job. We moved to Missouri and lived with his parents in a 4-room house with no indoor bathroom and a hand-pump in the kitchen which yielded cold water only. My whole family (by then, there were six of us kids) slept in one room - my three brothers and sister and me in one bed, and the baby and mom and dad in another bed. Tough times for a 16-year-old girl just beginning to really notice the opposite sex.

littlebug- that seems so crazy to me. When I hear about people living like that, I think of little house on the prairie era.

My mom experienced some of that to due to family issues and I thought she was an outlier but apparently others have actually lived it too.

Yeah, and or no indoor plumbing. It makes you think about the things you've always taken for granted. Heck, even my grandparents (Three born in the 1890s, one in 1880s) never lived without indoor plumbing and it's not as if they were all that well off.

I was referring to sleeping arrangements, not nannies and boarding school at age 8! However I know many English men who went to boarding school at 8 and girls at age 10. They all very very close to their families and still are. My husband went at 13 1/2 and my son at 14 - very close to parents, fathers in particular. It broke my heart every time I put my son on that plane, but it was the right school for him, he loved it, and it was a wonderful opportunity fir a very fine education. Will his son go to boarding school next year? No! Not at nearly $60,000 a year these days! Even with financial aid, the money needs to go for college. But DS will be back next year for his 30th reunion - still very loyal to his school. It would have also been my late husband's 60th. DS will go visit with that group, too.

I was talking about child rearing in general, not just boarding schools but that was an example of the disconnected and hands-off attitude that's even prevalent among better off families in the middle class. And of course, as you know, the vast majority of families can't afford to send their kids to boarding schools, it's just for the well off.

Council housing (public housing, much more common there than here) and/or terraced houses, the styles of houses most common, rarely have more than two bedrooms, so the kids sleep in the space available. Not as if there were a choice or preference.

I shared a room with siblings until I was in my 20's. We had a house with 9 people and 2 bedrooms. Actually, my older sister who was 17 years older than I was moved to Toronto when I was a toddler so I shared a room with my 5 siblings. We had 2 sets of bunk beds, I shared a bed with my sister Lizzie, the youngest was in a crib. When I was 7 my Mom was pregnant again so the 3 older boys moved upstairs into the attic. The baby passed away shortly after he was born so I shared the room with sister Lizzie and my youngest brother Paul until I was a young teenager. Lizzie moved out and Paul moved upstairs into the attic with the other boys and then my oldest sister moved back in so I shared with her. Then she moved to Missouri and I finally had a room to myself until I was 18 and then my sister Lizzie moved back home with her new baby and I shared the room with them, I was on the top bunk, Lizzie on the bottom and the my niece in her crib. I loved watching my niece move around in her crib while she slept and having conversations with my sister as she talked in her sleep. When I was 21 Lizzie moved to her own place and I finally had a room to myself. I slept in a single bed for a long time haha. I now live in the house I grew up in. I don't know how we did it, but we never seemed over crowded, and we only had one bathroom and a dog. My Mom kept the house immaculate, no clutter anywhere. I don't know how she did it.

Thanks everyone for the great comments and discussions. I enjoy sharing snippets of our lives here. :)

cherry Your mom must have been a magic person to keep things clean. Our place was always a mess. Except for the LR which we weren't allowed in. There were 5 of us girls.

Well, Texas Gem, sometimes I like to share my humble past to keep things real here. Not everybody grew up in an Ozzie and Harriet home. Not my fault, not your fault. It's just the way it was. :)

And Elmer, I most always look at your posts with askance - obviously we have differing viewpoints because we come from different places. Your background must be a far cry from mine. (By the way, my family moved in with my grandparents in 1970. Not all that many years ago.)

Why askance? Sounds like very different, yes, but that's okay and I think your background is more the outlier and not mine. But no worries. It would seem that your ancestors were in rural surroundings and had more kids in the family while mine were city dwellers and had fewer. That alone makes a difference for families of limited means.

LOL. Reminds me of a disagreement I have often with DH: 'Just because my opinion is different than yours, that doesn't make it wrong. It's just different.'

I'll be honest, as a child I always felt like my mom's descriptions were exaggerated at the very least. Surely that can't have been a reality only 40-50 years ago. But hearing stories from other family members and other people like littlebug who also lived like that in that era tells me it really is true.

T.V. and modern perceptions of the 60's/70s era make me think of hippies, Woodstock, riots, Vietnam, Leave it to Beaver, Mad Men, etc.

Not people living in a 2 room home with an outhouse, the only food source being what they grew in their garden. Surely not in America. Not in the 1960s.

The truth is that was a reality for many people and it really wasn't that long ago. Thankfully, I feel like our society has grown enough with a social safety net that the basic minimum standard has at least been raised to "people won't starve if they can't grow their own food" level.

My mom was born in the late 50's, here in Texas and she KNOWS what it is like to be truly hungry. To go to bed with a stomach that hurts because you are so desperately hungry and there simply isn't any food. That is entirely unacceptable to me. No child, no person should experience that.

I did, I shared a double bed & bedroom with my younger sister until I was 16. We are very close to this day.

Yes, I shared a room with several sisters when I was little. Over the years, as the older sisters grew up and moved out, we younger ones eventually got our own bedrooms. I missed sharing a room.

I was raised in a nice home in a Chicago suburb, but both of my parents started life with very little and survived through the Great Depression. It's not the same as having *lived* it, but I grew up understanding I was privileged.

My mother was born in her aunt's boarding house in NYC at the beginning of the 20th Century. (The UN is there now.) When she was very young, she, her parents, and her maternal grandmother and uncle rented a farmhouse in rural Rhode Island. There was no electricity or plumbing, and a wood stove was used for cooking and heat. There was a pump in the front yard. Her grandmother and uncle died of TB within weeks of one another within the first year there. (An x-ray in her later years showed that my mother had encapsulated TB in one lung.)

My father was one of seven siblings in a family who moved around Colorado and Missouri -- pretty much ahead of the sheriff. Sometimes his paternal grandparents, a retired doctor and his wife, lived with them. They were home schooled. Only the eldest son, mama's darling, completed college. My father left home at 17 after running out of money after one semester. He shipped out on a banana boat to South America.

Yes, I shared a nice sized room with my sister who is 18 months younger than I. We were a family of 6 in a 4 bedroom house. My older sister married when I was in high school,and I promptly moved into her room. Ahhhhhhh!

My grandparents lived in a 3 room house with an outhouse until the early 1970's when my Dad redid our bathroom and took our old fixtures, blocked off a part of their living room and made them a bathroom. I loved that little house. The barn and chicken coup were bigger than the house haha. They lived in the house by themselves so the one bedroom was fine with a big kitchen and living room.

I had a friend back in grade school who went to the same church as I did with my family, she had 4 sisters and the oldest 3 would rotate who got their own bedroom each year and the rest were in bunks in another bedroom while parents had their own as well (of course). I only had a brother and we both had our own room.

My mom was born in Houston in 1946, my dad born in California in 1945 - her family moved out here (California) when she and her twin were 5 years old and pretty much all on both sides except for my immediate family (brother had been living there since 1996 then my parents left for Nebraska in 2007) has continued to reside in California. But we're all basically what one would think of as the definition of "nuclear family" - I have an aunt and an uncle through my mom's side and an uncle on my dad's. My maternal uncle had 3 kids, my aunt had two, my paternal uncle had 2 kids from one marriage and one kid from his second.

I remember when my brother left our parents house for air force basic training, his old bedroom was turned into a home office within 24 hours - I think my mom was happy that the computer could finally be set up somewhere other than their bedroom!

Yes.