Every Child Has a Room of Their Own Now, and Nobody Comes Out

A reader writes:

I raised six children in a two-bedroom house in Manchester. My husband and I had one room, the girls had the other, and the boys slept on the verandah on a folding bed and a mattress that got dragged in when it rained. There was one bathroom, and a queue for it every morning. If somebody was crying, everybody knew. If somebody got good results, everybody knew that too. You could not sulk in that house. There was nowhere to go.

Please don’t think I am romantic about it. It was hard. I remember nights I would have given anything for a door I could close. My eldest son still complains that he did his homework for five years at the end of the dining table with his little sisters kicking him under it. We were not poor compared to some, but we were squeezed.

Now all my children are grown, and between them they have done well. I thank God for it. I have one daughter in Florida, one son in Kingston, two in England, one in Mandeville and one who is still trying to decide where he belongs. Most of them own their own homes. Big homes, some of them. Four bedrooms, five bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. A room for the television, another room for the other television, a room they call an office and a room nobody seems to use at all.

Last year I spent three months with my daughter in Florida. Lovely house. Quiet street. She and her husband both work long hours. The children are twelve and fifteen. And I will tell you what I saw, and I have been thinking about it ever since. In the evening, everybody came home and went into their own room. The boy with his game. The girl with her phone. The husband in the room with the big screen watching his sports. My daughter in the kitchen, cooking for people who ate at different times. Some nights I sat at that big dining table by myself. A table for ten, and one old woman eating.

I asked my granddaughter one evening if she ever talked to her brother. She looked at me like I was asking if she ever talked to the fridge. “He’s in his room, Grandma.” As if that settled it.

I am not blaming my daughter. She is a good mother and she works hard, and she built the house she dreamed of when she was a girl sharing a bed with her sisters. I understand why she wanted every child to have a door. I wanted that for them too, once. But I have come to believe that something happened on the way from our small house to her big one that nobody planned. We gave everybody space, and space turned into distance.

When I was bringing up mine, the house forced us together. We ate at the same time because there was one pot. We prayed together at night because we were all in earshot anyway. The children fought, yes, and they also learnt to make up, because they had to sleep beside each other that same night. You cannot stay vex with somebody whose foot is in your back.

In the big houses, you can avoid each other for days. And I think many families are doing exactly that, without even noticing. The house is so comfortable that nobody needs anybody.

My son in Mandeville says I am being old-fashioned. He says children today need privacy, that the world is different and they have more pressure. Maybe so. He also reminds me that I used to shout at them to go outside and give me some peace, which is true. But he has also admitted to me that he sometimes sits in his car in the driveway for twenty minutes before going inside, just to be alone. In a five-bedroom house. What does that tell you?

I don’t think the answer is for everybody to go back to one bathroom and a verandah bed. I am seventy-four and I have no wish to queue for the toilet again. But I wonder whether, when families plan their houses, they could think less about how to give everybody their own space and more about how to bring people together in it. One good big kitchen where everybody can sit. One television in the family room, not five. A verandah wide enough for everybody. A rule that the phone stays outside the bedroom. A table that gets used.

The Bible says God sets the lonely in families (Psalm 68:6). I always took that as a comfort. Now I wonder if some of us have taken the family and set everybody in it alone.

I don’t write this to make anybody feel bad. I write it because I love my children and my grandchildren, and I would rather they had a smaller house and a fuller table than the other way round. And maybe, if enough of us old people say it, somebody will listen.

— Mrs E.B., Manchester, Jamaica

Editor’s note

Mrs B. is careful not to argue that small houses are holy and big ones are not, and that is wise. Privacy has real value, especially for teenagers and for anyone who has grown up without it. Her point is subtler: the shape of a house shapes the habits of the people in it. If every room is designed so that nobody needs anyone else, families may need to work harder at being together. That might mean choosing a layout with one generous shared space, deciding where screens live, or simply agreeing on a meal eaten at the same table. Whatever size of house we have, the question worth asking is whether it draws us towards one another or helps us drift apart.

Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.

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