4 good reasons why kids shouldn’t share bedrooms

Christine Menges
6 min readFeb 28, 2022
image by Victoria_Borodinova on Pixabay

One of the most common experiences of childhood is sharing a bedroom with a sibling. According to a recent CBS News poll, about 60% of Americans say they shared a bedroom with a sibling at one point, while only 30% say they always had a separate bedroom. (About 10% never had siblings, according to the poll.) The experience differs by age group: 72% of Americans 65 and older shared, while only about half of adults under age 35 ever shared a room. In other words, bedroom-sharing seems to be on the decline.

I think it needs to be gone for good.

There are many who disagree with me. They think sharing a room is character-building. I don’t blame them for thinking this way. After all, most married Americans share a room with their spouse, and it’s the norm to share a dorm room in college. It’s part of the conventional wisdom that sharing a room with a sibling prepares them for (or at least gets them used to) these other parts of life. It helps kids learn sharing, negotiating, and communication skills, or at least that’s the traditional way of thinking.

Parents also make kids share for other reasons. When parents have very young children, (say, under the age of 5) it’s more convenient to have them in the same space when they both need help dressing themselves. It’s also sometimes a financial necessity. Aside from these reasons, bedroom-sharing should be avoided whenever possible.

By the time they enter elementary school, kids should no longer be sharing a room. Here are four good reasons why not.

  1. It’s a good way for siblings to be left unsupervised together for long periods of time.

When kids are in a room together where they both sleep at night, and can shut the door behind them, it’s a good way to be out from under the watchful eye of their parents. Even when they’re not sleeping, kids often use their room for recreational time like reading, playing games, talking to each other, etc. The lack of supervision means fights can escalate, and parents won’t be able to stop children until fights have reached a point where someone’s about to get hurt. Even if violence doesn’t become a problem, arguments escalating in general can become a problem.

When kids have their own rooms, they have more time to be alone without their sibling, manage their frustrations, and cool down. Cooling down is one of the most important parts of managing conflict. When you share a bedroom with a sibling, you have no space to cool down after arguments.

2. It’s NOT good preparation for life.

Contrary to popular belief, bedroom-sharing does not prepare children for life. It might be true that once children are grown, most of them will get married and share a bedroom with their spouse. However, the sibling relationship is very (very) different from the spouse relationship. Kids are not mature, grown adults in a romantic relationship with each other, and they’re usually not learning the negotiation and communication skills their parents think they are.

Bedroom-sharing is often a great recipe for making siblings do what they’re most notorious for doing: fighting. The closed quarters, as well as increased time alone together, escalate tensions between siblings and exacerbate fights. It also creates a lot of blurred boundaries. It’s very often not possible to divide a room exactly in half, with perfect compartmentalized areas for each child’s things. What often happens is the kids’ belongings start to jumble together, and it becomes unclear whose space is whose and what belongs to which kid. Lack of privacy is also an issue; something that becomes increasingly important as kids get older. Kids can learn that they aren’t entitled to privacy and that anything they own (like a diary, for example) is available for someone else to take. This is not good news for kids’ boundary development.

Having their own room is better for a child’s development. For starters, it encourages kids to take more responsibility for themselves. Their room’s a mess? They have only themselves to blame. They also get to make more of their own choices, like where to put their belongings and how to organize their room in a way that is best for them. Conflict is reduced between siblings when they don’t share, as well as opportunities to be unsupervised during conflict. Finally, for a child’s developing identity, having their own room is very important. They get to decorate their room to their liking, asking themselves questions about their interests, their likes, and dislikes. Often, when you share, your decoration space is confined to one wall, and you need to match other things, like bedspreads. Your individual identity is stifled, and you and your sibling(s) are treated as more of a unit.

3. It’s outdated.

I felt like the only kid in middle school and high school who was still sharing a bedroom, and that was in the early 2000s. I imagine it’s even less common today. What other people are doing matters. It’s important for a child to be able to relate to their peers, and not just for superficial reasons of “fitting in.”

We need people to relate to because having support matters. When everyone else has their own room, there are fewer people to commiserate with regarding common frustrations that come with sharing a bedroom. Feeling all alone in the world with your problems is a great way to make those problems worse.

4. It’s a fairness issue — and a respect issue.

And finally, the very most important reason to not make your kids share: it’s about fairness, and it’s about respect. One of the things that’s universally agreed upon in the bedroom-sharing world is that if two (or more) kids share a room, they must be the same gender, for obvious reasons. In families with three or more children, this often results in one kid having their own room while others share. Parents, this is not fair.

The unfairness takes many different levels. Not only is it unfair to the kids who share, but it could also be unfair to the kid who doesn’t share. For starters, the single-bedroom-having child may get resented by others (for a situation out of their control). They could also get sucked into territory disputes later. A common situation is when the oldest child (who’s had their own room) moves off to college, one of the younger siblings (who’s been sharing) “takes” their room, and then they both feel displaced and like the bad guy when the oldest comes back for break. All sorts of issues arise with whose stuff goes where and whose space is whose. Not to mention the whole thing being very disruptive to the younger child’s life, who now needs to plan around when Oldest Child comes back (and gets to feel homeless no matter where they are). It’s a nightmare — and not the most respectful way to treat your kids.

That’s the thing with fairness — it’s really about respect. Adults sometimes roll their eyes when kids complain about injustice. They say kids need to learn that “life isn’t fair.” And yes, kids sometimes need to learn that “fair” doesn’t always mean “equal.” In families, different kids might receive different treatment from their parents depending on their age, abilities, or responsibilities. Kids also need to learn parents can’t be fair over every minor issue. That’s different from a major issue — like the place where they sleep, study, keep all their belongings, and basically live — being treated as a minor issue. Not treating your kids’ sacred space as a major issue, and a top priority, is sending your kids a message they do not deserve a permanent place in your home and/or that place will not be valued, which means they, themselves are not valued. It’s blatantly unfair — and also disrespectful.

It’s the parents — not the kids — who are to blame for the unfairness. Parents need to try to be fair. They need to value their kids’ needs and try to get them met. Making kids share bedrooms while others have their own isn’t teaching them that “life isn’t fair.” It is making a conscious decision to not prioritize your kids’ needs.

The old way of thinking was that sharing a room was good for kids. Let’s embrace a new way of thinking: it’s not. It’s not good preparation for life, and it doesn’t build character in any way. If you, a caring parent want what’s best for your kids, I hope you will give the above ideas some thought. If your kids have been begging for their own rooms, you might just be doing them a favor in the best way by granting them their wish. Just this once.

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Christine Menges

Very obervant person who writes about her observations on life.