Will I always be able to pull of having a four bedroom house?

[waferhappy]

One room is mine and dh
One room is ds1 7
One room is dds 3 and 5
One room is Ds2 is 10 months
Obviously at the moment it makes sense for the two girls close in age to share? We have talked about converting the attic or adding an extension is it necessary as they get older?

...with than my own room & be on my own

I for on will be limiting the size of my family to what I can provide private space for beyond infant age. There will usually only be one parent working which gives us 'backup' for the other to work if one can't for any reason.

I don't see that as a restriction, I see it as wanting to do the best for my children.

Others obviously entitled to disagree but just wanted to point out that not all of us would feel unduly restricted by the 'room each' constraint.

I wouldn't worry about it in the least. When different uses are competing for your money as with most of us, I'd rather spend it on things such as education, rainy day savings, pension etc than on an extra room. And 5-bed houses aren't always the easiest to sell - especially if the amount of garden and day rooms isn't what you'd expect to match a 5-bed.

You can make things "fair" by changing who shares every few years. Yes, they'll squabble sometimes but learning to resolve squabbles is a skill that will stand them well in later years. Most large families I know have to share rooms at some stage of family life.

I'd worry more about the type of child who is given so much space and equipment in their own room that they hardly interact with their family, than the child who has to share.

Wow, some people are defensive... I said that I think it's selfish to "plan" for more children than you can provide with personal, private spaces in acknowledgement of the fact that things don't always go to plan. However, when you can avoid that (by limiting reproduction, or saving to move or modify your property), I think it's selfish not to try your best to do so. Why is it that some people seem to think that their offspring's claim to personal space and financial support with their studies is less important than their own want for more children than they can comfortably provide for?

And there's a huge difference between the late 20th century and the 21st, anybody who says otherwise is either way out of touch or living in denial! The labour market faces challenges now which didn't exist even five years ago, which I won't go into here, so it will be much harder for young people to get and keep jobs which pay a living wage. The disparity between house prices, earnings and availability of credit is far bigger now than it was in the 1990s and early noughties, and it's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. The rental market is already inflating in the bits of the country where work is available, in order to reflect that. The vast majority of young people now have no hope of buying a house in their early 20s without parental support, and lots of them won't be able to rent either (unless their parents are prepared to sign as guarantors on the contract while their offspring struggle to find employment or work on zero hour contracts with no security). The result is that (barring unexpected personal crises) parents need to plan for their children to be able to come home for long periods in their early adulthood, and I don't think that sharing a room is sustainable when you're talking about people in their late teens and early twenties.

Obviously not everybody will be able to manage this (due to unexpected pregnancy, illness, redundancy, divorce etc) but I think that it is a fundamental responsibility of parents to try, in so far as their circumstances allow them to. I think it's great that the OP is thinking about what is reasonably achievable while her children are still young, rather than waiting to see whether her current situation becomes unsustainable.

I'm sorry to have touched a nerve for a few people and I realise there will be some who simply do disagree - all I can say is that I'm extremely grateful that my parents did plan their family around their financial means, as it has allowed me to grow up with the space I needed to study (and not resent my sibling), leave university with no debt, get an excellent degree in a good subject, and learn another skill to professional standard so I always have a fall-back income stream if I'm out of work. It also means that my husband and I have somewhere to go when our postgrad courses finish in September, while we sort out our next steps in life. My parents really struggled and suffered at times in order to achieve this for my sibling and me, but they wouldn't think of parenting in any other way - and, having seen the extent of the benefits, neither could I.

It's fine to share, it just life IMO!

I shared with my dsis until dbro left home by virtue of the fact that we were both girls and dbro was the only boy. I didn't like it much, but got on with it as there was no choice.

We have 2 dses who used to share a big room but now have seperate rooms and we have lost our spare room. They do prefer separate rooms and we prefer it because bedtimes are much calmer but the choice was there. I certainly wouldn't have considered moving house or extending just to give them separate rooms! Finances wouldn't allow for starters.

I think ultimately, in larger families sharing is the norm! Few can afford a bedroom for each child, especially inlaces where house prices are high.

i think sharing a room is norma land nice. I was one of 3 sharing a room (all girls). If you have a boy and a girl there wll be a stage when you need to separate them i assume. I kind of resent that we had to move to 4 bedroom house which i loathe because of my dh's insistence that his 3 kids mustn't be allowed to share. tbh as 2 of them (my dsc) come and go it might be a bit disruptive but I get cross sometimes because it is so expensive.

I had to share a room until I was in my twenties and believe me it was hell. Try studying for your degree when your sister wants to go to bed early and all the rooms in the house are occupied by someone. At one point it was even suggested I go to revise in the car! It might sound nice and cute when the kids are young but believe me, it goes downhill from teens onwards. Given my experience, I would never have any of my children sharing a room but I only have one so it isn't going to be a problem.

Thanks everyone
I don't see it as fair the ds1 and 2 get their own rooms and they have to share it obviously makes sense to have the girls sharing rather than a 7 year old and ten month old.
I am looking at extension options and we can afford it but I'm wondering if its worth doing now or putting of till their older 15?13? .
My mind says ill save more money doing it now and getting it over with. At the moment they have a triple sleeper. Bunk beds with the lower bunk being a double dd1-5 has upper bed. Dd2-3 has the lower bunk.(safety) don't trust her up top properly try flinging her self of it! Haha

If you're definitely leaning towards extending the place I'd do it as soon as you reasonably can - the kids will get more benefit out of the space, your finances will have recovered by the time you have lots of expensive teenagers to provide for, and you'll probably get a better deal from tradesmen while work isn't so easy for them to come by. If it's not a straightforward loft conversion then you'll probably want to wait until your youngest is potty trained though - I remember that there were lots of times when the builders had to shut off our water supply, and I imagine that would be very hard to work around with a child who is still being sick and wearing nappies.