My Bed(room)?

Nothing tawdry here.. move along, move along. Actually, what has my interest today, is a pair of articles that I saw in this past Sunday's Star-Telegram. Specifically, they deal with the master bedroom. I'll update this post if I can find the links.

The first article discusses parents yielding their beds to their children. It describes many parents who, rather then fight their children's habit of crawling into bed with them in the middle of the night, either accept the children into their bed with them, or get up out of their own bed and go sleep in their child's. I know this happens. It happened this morning. But the people the story is writing about have it happen to them every night. This isn't just a problem, it's a bad habit. I'm amazed that people would let it go on for so long that this habit would set in. Maybe their bed is bigger then mine, but as it is, between my wife, myself, and the dog (small), I barely have enough room for myself. Add a child into that, and I may as well sleep elsewhere. And usually not sleeping in my bed means waking up in pain, if I get to sleep at all. Therefore, this has been an easy call for me. No children in my bed. That attitude also makes it easy for me to shut and lock the bedroom door when I need to. (wink wink)

The second article details how architects are designing new homes with dual master suites in order to accommodate a growing number of spouses who wish to sleep separately. This is something else I do not understand. Yes, both my wife and I have chosen, on the rare occasion (sickness usually, though restlessness has kept me out of the bed for half of a night before) one of us will chose to not sleep in the same bed, but that is rare. This is another thing that, to me, appears to be a bad habit that people have fallen into. In the article, it states that the couples don't suffer sexually, and their marriages are bettor for the separation, but I can honestly say that I don't ever foresee that happening to me. There is too much non-sexual touching and physical intimateness that goes on to split us up between two rooms. Besides, it aides spur of the moment sexual touching.

(This is also not to knock the dual master suite setup for something it's really good for, namely non-intimate cohabitational relationships among equals, i.e. roommates. This setup was a fairly popular apartment layout in Austin when I was in college.)

Why did I choose to write about these. It's not particularly revetting. I guess they just caught my eye this weekend, and the coincidence of my daughter crawling into my bed last night just kept it in the center of my mind recently.

Update 2007-03-15 9:06 PM CDT: Added links.