We just have a lot of people living in two bedroom apartments that aren’t on housing assistance. Three bedroom apartments are pretty rare. There’s a lot of 2-bedroom/1 bath houses, as well: those tend to be the affordable ones, because they are very undesirable. It puts them within reach of working class people, or they get bought up and rented out real cheap. I do think a lot of my students also share beds with same-sex siblings: they don’t talk about it, because it’s a little rare, but it comes up in college essays and such. So you have two girls in a full size bed and brother on an old couch and no real floor space.
There’s also a fair number of kids (and adults) who don’t have a bedroom at all–they sleep in the living room. In one-bedroom apartments, it’s pretty common for mom to sleep on the couch in the living room and the kids to have the bedroom.
ETA: I’ve also read college essays where it turned out a kid’s entire family lived in a sub-let laundry room or the kid was sleeping on a couch in the garage because the family moved in with an aunt and that’s the only place for him.
When my older kids left home the lil’wrekker was nine. We have 4 bed rooms. Somehow she has sucked up all the space in two. She has started on the closet in the guest room. I have got to clear some of her crap out, now that she is at college. I think maybe she is a hoarder. I am an ‘on the wagon’ hoarder, so she gets it honestly. We must clean and organize. I vow to hit-it this spring!
I’ve seen a few comments about English social services frowning on this kind of thing, and the same thing can happen in the US. My parents had adopted a child (bringing social services into the mix) and also ended up informally taking in some children of relatives (kids were signed over by the parent, and social services wasn’t involved in that). The social worker said the sleeping arrangements were okay for now but would need to change in the coming years. My family started looking into putting an addition on the house. In the end, the other children went to live with a different relative.I’m not sure what social services would’ve done if that didn’t happen, since the addition never came to pass.
Lived with my sister in the same room until we were 10, then we started renting a larger house and got our own bedrooms. Why? It’s called being poor. And we certainly weren’t the only ones in our poor, heavily Hispanic neighborhood. Both my parents remember sleeping three to four in a room (although they admittedly were sex segregated). If my sister or me ever needed to change, we did it in the bathroom or kicked the other one out until we were done. People need to realize there are more “Young Sheldons” than “Father Knows Best” in America.
Our two have their own rooms at home (10 and 12) but when we are on holiday sometimes we only have a one-bed apartment or the hotel room has two doubles and so on those circumstances they’ll share a bed. They don’t care and we’ve told them that whenever they feel uncomfortable about it we can change it.
That’s interesting. So in PNG it’s common for a family to build two homes?
I know in the past in the southern US it was common for the entire front of the house to be a screened-in porch, actually called a sleeping porch. The entire family would sleep there during the summer months. And to be clear in the south we only have two seasons, summer and fixin’ to be summer.
I think the reference was to PNG nationals, living in communal houses.
When I was a kid, I shared a bedroom with my younger sister until my elder sister left home at her marriage, freeing up a room. We had a four bedroom home, with eldest and next oldest sisters in their own rooms and my sister and I sharing. Eldest got married in 1969 so I was 13 when I finally got my own room. Just in time
if you get involved with CA social services in anyway shape or form they mandate that any siblings older than 10 have to be separated unless theres a special circumstance like my severely disabled brother needing room for possible medical care
I remember some friends who had a boy and a girl sharing a room up until about the age of 8 or 9, then saying that they had to build a new bedroom in their partially finished basement “because they’re starting to notice the differences between them”.
But that was in the 90’s.
As mentioned, this is more a modern western/American thing. Many other cultures share rooms, even the entire family. A short bit of googling will show many articles on the cultural differences around household sleeping patterns.
My same sex twins shared a room until they were 14. We lived in NYC and adding a third bedroom in an apartment search would add over a thousand dollars to our rent, so they shared. One thing though, once they had separate bedrooms they stopped fighting all the time.
It does happen here but as long as the parents are entitled to council housing (ie. they’re British citizens or refugees who have the right to remain and don’t earn more than the pretty generous income threshhold and don’t own their home) then the council will eventually help them move somewhere more suitable. It can take a very long time in some areas, like London, but the parents are expected to be at least attempting to give their opposite-gendered kids their own bedroom when they’re over 11. The parents will often move into the living room, same as in the US. It’s not like kids are going to get taken away from their parents just because they share a room with an opposite-sex sibling.
Living in a laundry room or garage would most likely be completely illegal though, unless it had been adapted so thoroughly that actually it was a bedroom that used to be a laundry room or garage. If it was still where washing machines or cars were used it wouldn’t be considered safe - the kid still wouldn’t be take into care straight away but if the parents didn’t make any attempt to rectify the situation or accept help to rectify it then it could happen.
Sharing beds is uncommon (except on an ad hoc basis after nightmares or whatever) simply because people get bunkbeds instead. I never understood shows like Malcolm in the Middle where the boys had to share a bed - it’s not like bunkbeds cost a lot of money.
In NJ at least, housing assistance (HUD, Section 8) is based on family size, and the subsidy is based on the rents for the size apartment that a family is eligible for. And that size is based on one bedroom for the parents and two same sex children sharing a room but no opposite sex sharing. So a family with 2 boys or girls is eligible for a 2 bedroom apartment, but a family with one son and one daughter is eligible for a 3 BR apartment.
My parents made a choice when my sister was born. Move from the 2 bed house in a really nice area very close to the centre and all things interesting with a great community or sell and buy a big house in the burbs. The decided to stay and me and my sister shared a room till I moved out at 19 (she was a year younger).
We both agree that it was a really really good decision. We loved living were we lived and although there were issues it wasn’t too bad and the location made it totally worth it.
I was the 4th kid and a “surprise” after 7 years. If I had been a 3rd girl instead of 2nd boy my parents had no idea what they would have done. As it was the room I shared with my brother was smaller than the rooms they had in the Deer Hunter. If I had turned out to be twins like the doctor originally thought I think my parents would have just run away.
My brother and I shared a room until I was probably ten, and he would be 15. We had bunk beds. Of course we were poor and there wasn’t another bedroom to spare but I didn’t feel like there was a problem with it. Why would opposite sex matter anyway? Same sex siblings could I suppose still engage in the same activities that opposite sex siblings might. I don’t recall ever catching my brother naked and I assume he took his personal business to the bathroom.
My childhood best friend had six sibs and they all slept in the same room on a pile of pillows on the floor. Ages toddler to teen.
