As kids, my twin sister and I had our own separate bedrooms in our spacious suburban house?hers was carpeted in ?80s bubble gum pink, mine in royal blue?but we still slept in the same bed every night. Our parents say we had slept better in the same crib, too. My twin would roll over and hold my bottle up to my lips when we were only a few months old. As toddlers, we?d babble in gibberish after lights out. Throughout our childhood, we continued to stay up late together, chattering and curling up under the covers.
When my daughters were born?two girls who are just 22 months apart?having them share a bedroom made sense. To begin with, we had no other choice in a two-bedroom house. And how wonderful would it be for them to be as close as my sister and I are to this day" We moved them in together when the youngest was one and the oldest was almost three. The whole idea of having a separate bedroom for each kid is a relatively recent middle- and upper-class phenomenon in North America, where there are, on average, fewer than two children per household, yet the houses are among the biggest in the world. But look at different cultures and countries where housing costs are higher and space more limited, and sharing rooms?and even beds?is just a given.
Of course, there are pros and cons to both set-ups. While some of us will do whatever it takes to give kids their own rooms for the sake of more privacy and longer stretches of sleep, others are deciding to have them share even wh...