How much space do you have in relation to you family size?

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Just curious. Hubby and me just discussed how much space people need for children an parents. Of course, it´s different in china in relation to kanada, and of course it differs with the income. But, in general, to be comfortable, at what age you think children need separate rooms, for example?
 
It depends on the country, the continent, how rich society is, and how rich people are.
My bachelor Studio apartment-60m2.
and in Soviet times built three bedroom apartments 60m2, and there lived a family with 2-3 children and everyone was happy and everyone was placed there. Yes and now live, as well.
And it’s not China, it’s Ukraine. 😊
 
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Athanasiy said:
and in Soviet times built three bedroom apartments 60m2, and there lived a family with 2-3 children and everyone was happy and everyone was placed there.
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Good to hear 🙂 If the Lord blesses us with the children we hope to have, this would be our situation 😃 No one of us likes the the thought of moving again and the costs wouldn´t make it possible.
 
Well…I guess that depends too on what’s comfortable for your culture and your personalities. As soon as I was old enough for a real bed I had my own room. My house is a ranch house. We have a room for me, one for my brother, and one for my parents. A living room, a bathroom, kitchen, unfinished basement, unfinished attic…we’re comfortable (though mom wishes we had a dining room for entertaining).

But I know of one family where same-sex siblings shared until teen years. Another where the children always shared bedrooms. I even knew of one where a bedroom was set aside for each child but they were not required to sleep in it. They slept in their parents’ bed with them. (Before anyone sharpens their pitchforks, I just want to add that this is the norm for their culture, and I’m sure nothing depraved happened). What’s comfortable for one family isn’t for another. I think I would miss my privacy if I had to share, but maybe it’s different if you do from the beginning (?)
 
We have four sons in a small three bedroom home in the US. Our three oldest children (6, 4, and 2) share a bedroom, and our baby shares with my husband and I. When our baby is a little bigger, he will share with the 2yo.

Because our bedrooms are small, it would be very difficult to do more than three kids per room. I don’t think kids need their own room, but I do think they need a little space that’s just theirs. We’ve discussed putting a small addition on if we have more children, which would add a bedroom and make for a less cramped dining area.
 
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Some thoughts:

–We have a LOT of space in our current house (about 2900 sq. ft.), but I grew up in in half the space (1500 sq. ft.) with the same family size. Comically, the house I grew up in now only houses my mom and dad but seems really small because they have at least 3X as much stuff as they did when I was a kid…
–It makes a lot of sense for the baby to sleep in the master bedroom until he/she is sleeping longer stretches.
–My main objection to room sharing for little kids is that they’ll wake each other up. We’ve managed to never have kids sharing rooms (aside from a friendly sleepover).
–On the other hand, kids will feel safer and happier at bedtime with another kid in the room.
–With little kids, there are also safety issues. For example, a friend’s special needs 5-year-old once piled pillows on his infant brother. Fortunately, my friend walked in and rescued the baby, but that could have been fatal. There are all sorts of rules about what kinds of things kids 0-3 should not have access to, and unfortunately slightly older siblings often have fun toys with tiny pieces that are dangerous for littler kids, but at the same time very attractive. It takes a lot of maturity on the part of a big brother or sister to realize what kinds of items are unsafe for infant and toddler siblings.
–Another one of my friends who has 6 children was at one point very strict about not owning any chokable items. A compromise move is to make sure that the baby/toddler room is 100% clean of contraband and that no chokable items are allowed there. I did something similar for Baby Girl’s playroom when she was little so that I could pen her up there safely while I did household tasks elsewhere.
–Our kids are girl (15), boy (almost 13) and girl (5). We would have had a heck of a time having the two girls share a room, as the older girl had lots of dangerous craft items at the time. Baby Girl is just now growing into the age where she’s safe around that stuff.
–Gender is also an issue. At some point it gets weird for a brother and sister to be sharing a room.
 
I grew up with 3 bedrooms, one for parents, one for 2 brothers & one for 2 sisters. Sharing was okay except for my sister’s habit of sticking popsicles on my dolls.(Maybe I need to get over that.)
Now we have 3 bedrooms, 2400 sq ft, a bedroom for parents, one for son and one for grandson. I think it;'s fine for kids to share a room as long as they have some space that’s their own.
 
My Grandma and her siblings lived in the same room for years until they were of age and got married, and left. Girls were with the girls in one room. Boys with boys in another room. And the mother and father in their own room. 3 rooms at minimum.
 
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Xantippe said:
On the other hand, kids will feel safer and happier at bedtime with another kid in the room.
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Yes. When we moved #3 out of our room, we tried to move him into the third bedroom on his own. It did not go well. Then we put the toddler bed in with his brothers and suddenly no more night wakings. I’m convinced it’s because he could hear their breathing if he woke up part of the way.

I am very strict about separate sleeping spaces for naptime, but that can involve my bed or couches, too, and only applies to littles.
 
Thank you for your answers - it´s really interesting! I grew up with a sister +10 years older than me, when we were little, we had the space for seperate rooms, later she lived not at home, so no personal experiece on this. My husband shared a room with his brother up to his
early teenage years.
I read many different things on little children sleeping in the prents room. We have luckily found a three bedroom apartment and a big sfofa in the furure chldren´s room in case we want to sleep there. I have eard some comments like"a baby needs to sleep in the parent´s bedroom" up to “your marriage will thank you if you won´t do this and instead of this, wake up in the night and stay in the child´s room”.
We noticed that, now as we have our privacy without parents in law, we need minimum space to feel at home, but the general space here in germany feels like a palace for us. We even don´t use the third room at the moment. I was curious if this is caused by our current situation without children, or the norm in many cases.
 
It very much depends on climate. In New England and the PNW where it snows or in Arizona/New Mexico where it is very hot you need more square footage than say, in Flordia or Texa or the South where you can spend time outside. Internationally, a bigger house would be necessary in say, Russia, but not as important in Australia or Japan.

It also depends on your personality. Our infants stay in our room until they turn one. Kids otherwise share. My brothers shared the tiny bedroom (about 10x12) until they were teenagers (16, 14 and 13) because they enjoyed having a large playroom/hangout room and we had a few nooks where we could read and do homework. It was good for me, too, because it gave me (a girl) a bit more space in the house. My parents let us use it as OUR space so we were not expected to keep it clean like we were the living room.

When it comes to baby sleeping. I am a HUGE believer in having a “sidecar” if you are breastfeeding. I would have DIED those early years if I had to wake up, shlep myself to another room, feed the baby and then go back to sleep. And if I slept in another room I’d of had no time with my husband. But it’s what works for OUR marriage. We do separate sheets and blankets and we have a Queen sized bed. My inlaws have a full-size bed because they cuddle. My friends could not function in anything less than their California King.

Right now we have Master bedroom, Kids bedroom and my husband’s office. Kids are just together because—it’s SO much easier that way. They are all young enough they go to bed together.

Side note–along with breastfeeding having an infant in your room reduces the chances of SIDS. Unless you have no other options, I would strongly suggest sleeping with your infant nearby (sidecar, Moses basket, basanette or close crib) for at least the first 6 months.
 
I forget what we did previously, but Baby Girl was in a pack n play bassinette in our master bedroom until about 3 months. I slept there with her (she was waking very frequently and had feeding issues) and my husband slept (extremely happily) on an air mattress in the nursery. By around 3 months, we had moved Baby Girl out of the master bedroom and into a crib in the nursery and husband back into the master bedroom.

The idea is to reduce the amount of moving around at night and the number of people awake during the night.

(I also used white noise to help me get to sleep in the middle of the night, because Baby Girl’s movements could be pretty loud.)
 
I never had a separate room until I moved out on my own around age 22. No one every died from sharing a bedroom 🙂
 
When baby are little there is no need for a separated room from the parents.

We don’t need an other room, BUT an other member of the family will add a lot a things that need to be somewhere.
So better to laon the maximum of things we can (clothes, toys…).

My baby is 21 mouths old and always in our room. We have no other bedroom. But our bedroom is very large. It’s better for breadfeeding.

I believe 2 years could be an appropriate time to put a child in an other room. It was the case for my brother.
And 2 children of close ages can saher a bedroom.

If we had any other children, we will not had the choice, because we have only two bedrooms and owners of our house (so we cannot moove at least in the 6 next years).
 
Xantippe said:
–Gender is also an issue. At some point it gets weird for a brother and sister to be sharing a room.
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Yes… But not before puberty…

I share a bedroom with my brother until almost 14. We had no other bedroom.
We have a lot of space- 2 rooms and bunks beds.
It had become critical when start having periods.

But in all honesty, we fight all nights, and my brother since I was ten, usually go to sleep in my parents bed with my mother, and my father sleep on the couch…!
 
Anicette said:
But in all honesty, we fight all nights, and my brother since I was ten, usually go to sleep in my parents bed with my mother, and my father sleep on the couch…!
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That sounds incredibly unhealthy. It is unacceptable for a child to regularly have a parent forced out of their bedroom, for all parties involved. Sick kid or one-off situation? Sure but a young boy regularly sleeping with mom while dad gets booted to the couch? Kinda ick.
 
Mother tried to fired him to bed evrey time, then renonced, because he will not move on himself, and he was not a baby that we can move, but a 7-10 years old boy.

Perhaps they could have been more authoritarians…

But can they really force us to sleep in the same room if we argued?
I have never wanted that he gone out, but I do not think so to be a social person at all…:roll_eyes:

And we have no other room to separate.
Perhaps they don’t want to force him to do something that he don’t want to because they can’t offered us much…

And did I mention, that we also had no bathroom? (just a shower in the kitchen?)😉
 
Anicette said:
Mother tried to fired him to bed evrey time, then renonced, because he will not move on himself, and he was not a baby that we can move, but a 7-10 years old boy.

Perhaps they could have been more authoritarians…

But can they really force us to sleep in the same room if we argued?
I have never wanted that he gone out, but I do not think so to be a social person at all…:roll_eyes:

And we have no other room to separate.
Perhaps they don’t want to force him to do something that he don’t want to because they can’t offered us much…

And did I mention, that we also had no bathroom? (just a shower in the kitchen?)😉
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Kid on couch…dad with mom. Allowing a young boy to dictate sleeping arrangements is not okay.
 
Yes, It is the better solution.

On our case, we are demanding kids, and never sleep on couch on ourselves. More, the couch cannot be transformed in a bed.

Seriousely, this sort of sleeping battle should be a problem for my family too, of we had others kids. Because we have only two bedrooms. (including one very little). And I have very few authority on my child yet…

We could just stay with just one child to ovoid any problem or jealousy.

For my husbdand it’s the better solution. For me, I don’t believe not having the requiered numbers of bedrooms is a reason to not reproduce.

House is just a material thing. Kids are eternal souls and for the rest of our lifes.
 
Anicette said:
Yes, It is the better solution.

On our case, we are demanding kids, and never sleep on couch on ourselves. More, the couch cannot be transformed in a bed.

Seriousely, this sort of sleeping battle should be a problem for my family too, of we had others kids. Because we have only two bedrooms. (including one very little). And I have very few authority on my child yet…

We could just stay with just one child to ovoid any problem or jealousy.

For my husbdand it’s the better solution. For me, I don’t believe not having the requiered numbers of bedrooms is a reason to not reproduce.

House is just a material thing. Kids are eternal souls and for the rest of our lifes.
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No offense to your parents but you can do better than they did. Be a parent. Do not let children…even children who are fighting…make the rules of the house. My 3 brothers shared a small room. It was not always easy, but my parents didn’t let them dictate the rules. Your parents let a kids have their way rather than being adults and finding a way to make things work. You can be a better parent.
 
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