In recent decades, it’s become increasingly common for kids growing up in the United States to have their own room and not share a room with a sibling. This is the result of a couple of trends, including bigger houses and fewer kids per family.
As a result, the average number of bedrooms per child in the U.S. — according to census data — increased from 0.7 to 1.1 from 1960 to 2000.
That said, there isn’t much evidence that either setup—independent rooms or bunking with a sibling—has any particularly positive or negative long-term impacts.
But what I’m wondering is this:
What’s up with the 1.1 bedrooms per child?
Why does the average American child have more than one bedroom?
Are these just guest bedrooms being counted as children’s bedrooms?
I hope so.
What kind of parent gives their child two bedrooms in their home?
For much of my childhood, my siblings and I shared two bedrooms. Two boys—later three when my mother remarried and we added a stepbrother—shared one room. My sister, and later a stepsister, shared another.
But when I turned 14, I moved into an unheated room in the basement — a paneled box in the middle of a cold, often wet concrete space. It was dark, chilly, dank, and my own.
My mother repeatedly denied me permission to move into the basement, citing the temperature and general awfulness of the room, so I waited for a weekend when they were away and moved downstairs anyway.
Once you’ve established a beachhead, you’re hard to dislodge.
It took my parents two days to even realize I was now living in the basement, and when they did, they decided not to protest.
Eventually, this basement bedroom became especially helpful when things went south with my stepfather, and I began entering and exiting the home via the hatchway—the bulkhead in my childhood parlance — and avoiding the upstairs altogether.
Yes, I had to pile blankets atop me to stay warm in the winter, and the furnace and water heater made quite the racket at night, but the apace was my own, and I suspect my brothers were happy to be rid of me.
So yes, I was one of those kids who had his own room—at least for a few years—but it was hardly palatial.
It probably prepared me well for the cruddy little apartments and homelessness that was to come before I managed to get myself on solid footing.
Had I occupied 1.1 bedrooms during my childhood, the shift to my considerably reduced accommodations would’ve been quite a shock to the system.
