Rooms of Their Own: Child Experts, House Design, and the Rise of the Child’s Private Bedroom

Abstract

Over the last hundred years, American vernacular housing has promoted the standard that children ought to have their own bedrooms. Architectural floor plans and house plan books indicate the increasing shift toward houses with plentiful bedrooms. Alongside the architectural evolution came the voices of child-rearing experts, who insisted children benefit psychologically from spatial separation from the rest of the family, even siblings. As the twentieth century progressed, a private bedroom supplied the best opportunity for child privacy, solitude, and development.