I've been thinking about this since a friend told me he and his PMC wife are buying a FIVE bedroom house even though it's the two of them and one kid (and they aren't having any more). For nearly all of human history, humans - especially families - slept communally. But with suburban sprawl and the popularity of McMansions, white US Americans with middle incomes or above decided every kid has to have their own bedroom, and anything less is weird or cruel. Seriously, suggest to a well-off American that you want your kids to share a bedroom instead of having their own. They will be shocked at first, then do that thing where they're confused but also angry that you would subject your kids to that. It just seems like a wasteful bourgeois luxury to me.
This is entirely anecdotal, but I've known people who grew up sharing bedrooms with their siblings, and others who had their own bedrooms in large houses. It seems to me that people who grew up sharing bedrooms with their siblings are closer to each other. Which I do think kinda makes sense. Especially now with phones and laptops, a big house where everyone has their own room just makes it a lot easier for family members to go off and do their own thing all day. Even the passive act of TV watching, my home-buying friend is excited because this house has a TV upstairs and a TV room in the finished off basement. He's all like "I can watch sports downstairs while my wife watches Lifetime upstairs har har!" It's not enough capitalism isolates us from our communities, but now we are getting isolated from members of our own immediate family.
Return to shared bedrooms.
Edit: screw it I'm just gonna lean into my incredibly unpopular take...
ChaCha posters: "Americans + capitalism live ridiculously unsustainable lifestyles by taking incredible levels of resources from the environment and global poor"
Also ChaCha posters: "Don't you DARE take away my 4-bedroom McMansion!!!"
Yes, but what did people do for privacy before we had McMansion subdivisions? I guess they went out for a walk something? Or went somewhere "public" that offered privacy? I genuinely don't know. Maybe the problem is more the suburban lifestyle that doesn't offer any way to experience privacy other than within the walls of your home?
What you describe in the post with how capitalism divides family members from each other -- that is the problem. Even if everyone has to be in the same room all day, if they all have their own devices and have headphones in, they can watch different things and exist in their own separate worlds while existing in the same physical space.
I have two brothers. When I was a kid, there were a few years when I had to share one room with both of my brothers, and later, we each got our own room. The three-in-one situation was really stressful for all of us, my parents included. We were thrilled when we got to have our own rooms. As for the division issue you brought up, that wasn't much of an issue in my family, because we weren't allowed to have TVs in the bedrooms, and both computers that had internet access were in common areas of the house. You describe a real problem, but going back to shared bedrooms won't necessarily fix it, it would just make introverts' lives worse.
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