Whole family bedroom?

[johnd2]

Hi all,
Our family is multi cultural and currently 2 parents 2 very young children.
We are at the stage of questioning the wisdom of "standard" sleeping arrangements now, obviously the British way is get the kids in their own room as soon as you stop being judged for it (ok I'm exaggerating) but for many other countries it's normal for the whole family to sleep together.

We were thinking of having us all in a room but have no idea about benefits and drawbacks of different setups, should we have a king size and bunk beds, or just two king size by knocking 2 bedrooms together, or some kind of bespoke bed setup with 4 singles at different angles? How about how privacy changes as the kids get older, should we make booths with curtains? And should each of the kids have a bigger private space and some more shared space too? Or separate rooms/spaces in the house for privacy. I'm aware of the continuum between totally private space and public/family space for each person but lack ideas.

Thanks for reading, thoughts, experiences and ideas appreciated please!

Thanks all, some strong opinions, forcefully put there!
And sorry to those who have suffered and were in families that had shared bedrooms. It's always nice to have a reminder to respect your children.

Most people don’t need a reminder to respect their children by not having sex in the same room as them.
Not to mention that by choosing to raise them in the U.K. they will inevitably adopt many Western values & norms and will be embarrassed if still sleeping in one room as their parents by the time they attend school. They won’t want to invite any friends round which is hardly fair on them.

My ideal arrangement for the first decade of parenting would be a super king bed and pull out trundle beds or mattresses.

We had a lonnnng period of dc climbing into our double bed at night and I used to fantasise about possible bed arrangements.

I’d still want to have rooms of their own to graduate to eventually when they were ready.

All comments appreciated, but just for the record we are not sex addicts and a few hundred pounds to rebuild a stud wall are not going to put us off.

Clearly Mumsnet obsession is sex and house prices! Either way I doubt we will be running our sleeping arrangements past social services for approval.

Why did you ask if you didn't want people's opinions then? 🙄

Thanks again, I've reread all the comments.

I like the idea of having flexibility on both sides. So a couple of people mentioned a huge bed but also an option of a separate bedroom, freely choosen but the children. I like that level of autonomy by giving the kids options without having to vocalise it.

Also bear in mind I'm not meaning all our nothing, I'm trying to explore the middle ground here. So one extreme would be one big bed with all of us in (not planning on that) and the other extreme would be separate rooms on another floor of the house with all doors closed.

But there is a rich middle ground,eg us in the main part of the room at one end and two mezzanines at the opposite end of the room, or three lightly separated areas with stud wall and an archway (with curtain), or separate adjacent rooms onto the landing but we leave the doors open at night (this is what we actually do at present)
Etc etc, the possibilities are only limited by our collective imagination!

I've heard a lot of cautionary tales here but I'd still like to hear ideas as well, if any!

If you have an L shaped room this setting will work very well because you're all together but there's a separation too.

When a place we lived had a mouse infestation we were all in one bedroom, we had the double bed then across the room was the bunk bed. But we did have to move All our wardrobes and drawers into kids bedroom.
Another place we had a double bed and a single bed because little children waking up in night but getting too hot with three in the double was tiring and uncomfortable! They have their own rooms it was just that waking in the night stage. Spare bed is back in spare bedroom now!

My dc age 5 has his own bed but most nights wakes up for a wee and then climbs back in with us! I agree small kids like to be with their parents especially if they are used to co-sleeping or bed-share from
an early age.

My 13 yo however, definitely wanted her own space by the age of 7 as she wanted to have sleepovers and space to play and demanded privacy from age 12.

Id factor in these developmental needs in your plans.

My ideal situation (and I now people who did gave this set-up) would have been two bedrooms with mattresses either on the floor or with very low bedframes. The first would have a king-size mattress and a single mattress. The second would have two single mattresses. That way you can start off with the baby sleeping in your bed, have them sleeping nearby when they are older or if you are ill or otherwise not in a situation for safe bedsharing. To start off with, the second room is where you can have sex, or where one of you can go if you need uninterrupted sleep, or are feeling ill and want peace, or are snoring. When your older child wants their own room, they can go there but also have a parent or sibling spend some or all of the night on the other mattress if they need company, and they can return to the mattress in the room with the big bed if they want to without disturbing people.

I didn't think we were sex addicts by wanting to have sex in the privacy of our own bedroom. It's a perfectly normal activity when you love someone.
Neither do I understand why you are so keen to have every one sharing one space when you don't have to. We all slept better once the kids were in their own rooms.
If you only have stud/partition walls they aren't expensive to move, but lots of places in the UK the houses have solid brick walls or otherwise walls that can't easily be demolished, particularly if it's a very old house. I lived in a house that was wattle and daub so no moving walls there.

I'm a bit confused as if you feel strongly enough to make a conscious choice about this I'd have thought you'd know what you think about the benefits and how you'd like it to work. It seems odd to engineer this to me but I guess myp norm is separate rooms. For me if I did this I'd knock two rooms through with an opening with single beds ,bunks in one side and me and h in the other. (But really it would be like two rooms without having to go out of a door and in another). Your children's needs and wants will change over time. To me unless it is ethical or moral or driven by practical reasons I wouldn't want to have living arrangements my children might feel they need to keep hidden from friends or make them feel different. Think you are trying to cover too many vases with this OP, as what is ok for a toddler is different for an 8 year old, 13 year old, 15 year old.

Bases , not vases !

Most of the world doesn’t have sanitation either. Will you be getting rid of your loo?

honestly, this is the most bat shit thing I have heard on here. Let your kids have their own space and also let them know they are welcome in your room.

This is weird and controlling.

The OP doesn’t sound weird or controlling to me, just to add it wouldn’t have been my idea of an ideal set up personally.

I am curious however as to why this alternative way of sleeping is something that some families choose to do.

No one accused you of being sex addicts. But given that you are a married couple with children, it is reasonable to assume you do have sex at least occasionally. Most married couples like to have sex in their bedroom which doesn't make them sex addicts so it is a reasonable comment.

Personally I don’t get the whole sleeping together in one room. People on here bang on about it a lot saying it’s what other cultures do but that’s normally a space thing not ‘Kieran and Meghan’ living in their 3 bed semi in Maidstone.

It’s a bad day when you need reminding to respect your own children.

I see you’re still clinging to this idea, I can’t even fathom why.

I know a family who did this as part of Attachment Parenting. They had 2 king size beds (or maybe super kings) side by side in one room- they pretty much took up the whole room. Each child also had their own bedroom for playing/dressing etc. the eldest child moved into her room when she was about 8. All her younger brothers followed pretty quickly. It was a big house!!

The bit about ' autonomy without needing to vocalise it ' makes me think of letting children sleep where they land. This makes me think about neglectful households where it is a free for all. Although I'm sure that's not what you mean.

Married couples having sex does not make them 'sex addicts' ffs!! What a ridiculous (and backward!!) thing to suggest!!

You do know, don't you OP, that married couples are actually entitled to have a full and healthy sex life? That this sex life is actually normal??

How bizarre of you to suggest that it isn't!! 😱

If you want booths with curtains, crack on. How are any of us supposed to tell you what sleeping arrangements to have?

Is this something you need to do for space? I just do t see the benefit of doing it if you have 2 bedrooms. I would give the kids the bigger room and make the smaller one the master

Something practical to consider in the UK is condensation, which then causes damp and health problems.
Lots of people in one room will exhale a lot of moisture so ventilation is needed. Also mattresses on the floor can tap moisture underneath (from sweat) causing damp there.

This is something that is lovely for the parent, but awful for the child.

I'd be interested to know what the advantages could be with children above toddler age. I can't see why you'd choose it if you had the option to to, it seems all downsides to me.