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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Why do we share beds?
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I mean apart from the convenience of sharing body fluids, why do people share a bed to actually sleep in?
It's just that sleeping is so different for each person, and having another person on the bed can be so disruptive? I know this is not just me.
So why do we continue with this as the "ideal".
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
It's a relatively new concept. In previous centuries it wasn't unknown for married couples to have separate rooms. And that goes right back to Roman days when just about everybody had a single bed.
A double bed is about the right size for one person to be comfortable in. Share it, and someone else will probably steal the duvet so you wake up cold in the middle of the night, or else you wake up to find your arm/leg has gone numb thanks to someone lying on it/you are trapped by them and can't move/they snore etc.
And you might not want to share a bed with someone who has the flu or gastric upset.
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
As Ecclesiastes has it, woe to him who lies down and has nobody to keep him warm. In the days before double-glazing, central heating and the like, having a bedfellow was a considerable advantage. If you slept alone, you would freeze.
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
'In Roman times just about everybody had single beds'. Depends on what you could afford, surely? I'd imagine that quite a lot of people - siblings and so on- shared beds until fairly recently, and maybe still do, because beds cost money and take up space and there wasn't the money or the space for everyone to have a bed of their own. That and the warmth.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
I forgot about the medieval era and later when anyone looking for a bed in an inn might well have to share one if they didn't have much money. Also servants would have been expected to. It was usually only the privileged and more affluent who had their own space.
Roman bedrooms could be incredibly small. Many had literally just room for a single bed (which would be smaller than a modern-day one) and a chest for clothes. Slaves would have been lumped together in the slave quarters.
[ 02. May 2016, 09:35: Message edited by: Ariel ]
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
That's what I'd thought (about the later periods). Didn't know that about the Roman ones, though. Would the family of your average urban pleb- say a tanner or something living in an insula in Rome itself- each have had a bed to themselves?
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
They probably would have had a single mattress apiece or similar. A double would have cost more and would have had to be made specially as they weren't common in Roman times, and if you had that kind of money you wouldn't be living in an insula in the first place. Some would have had actual beds if they could get them up the stairs.
Insulae were basically just one large room, possibly subdivided into two. All you could do pretty much was sleep in it. Cooking wasn't safe, accidents and fires were common, there were no washing or toilet facilities and insulae could be dark inside. The room in the insula would really just have been one large communal family bedroom and place to store your belongings. Until such time as someone in an adjoining flat knocked over the brazier/had a cooking accident and set the place alight.
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Fascinating- thanks.
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
As Ecclesiastes has it, woe to him who lies down and has nobody to keep him warm. In the days before double-glazing, central heating and the like, having a bedfellow was a considerable advantage. If you slept alone, you would freeze.
Or as the original inhabitants here still say "cold enough to be a two women night".
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
In Pamela the heroine expects to share a bed with the housekeeper and another maid (who is in fact Mr B waiting to pounce but P faints as usual). I get the impression that for much of history you would be lucky to have a bed let alone a room to yourself.
As for modern sharing, one word: kingsize. I still think, misty-eyed, of the hotel where the bed was two kingsize run together. But even one will afford that crucial extra space.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Scout around in historical records, and you can easily find accounts of poor families all crammed into one bed, six or eight of them. You can find photos of Jane Austen's bedroom -- she shared the bed with her sister Cassandra. It was not until the Victorian worries about masturbation/homosexuality became obsessive that children got their own beds. Beds were possibly the most expensive piece of furniture a family owned. (Remember Shakespeare, leaving his wife the second-best bed in his will.) To acquire a second or third one might well be beyond their means.
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
[QUOTE]Or as the original inhabitants here still say "cold enough to be a two women night".
Or one nice fat woman as in "Marry a fat woman, you'll have warmth in the winter and shade in the summer."
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jacobsen
seeker
# 14998
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Posted
Remember Jane Eyre, who, as a teacher, shared a bed with another teacher, a Miss Gryce, and couldn't read the letter offering a job as governess until Miss Gryce had fallen asleep. There was also an issue with how much candle was left to read by.
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
... the bed was two kingsize run together ...
We stayed in a hotel a couple of years ago where the bed was so big we almost had to say goodnight by telephone. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
As Ecclesiastes has it, woe to him who lies down and has nobody to keep him warm. In the days before double-glazing, central heating and the like, having a bedfellow was a considerable advantage. If you slept alone, you would freeze.
Hence the warming pans, long nightshirts, thick feather quilts and bed curtains. However I take your point, once the fire had gone out it was cold in those rooms.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I assume that servants, or those too poor to have a bed, slept on pallets, straw mats or bedrolls on the floor. Baby Jesus was laid in a manger -- I bet his parents got a pile of straw.
A practice that you still see in Asia (not so much in the West now) is partitioning the sleeping space to get a little privacy.
Here's a historical photo from New York City. This is especially desirable if you have to share with a bunch of people you don't know or particularly trust. I was interested though to read in Wuthering Heights that Catherine Earnshaw's bed seems to be very similar, a boxlike space accommodating just the bed with some shelves for books and a window. It can't have been so that her room mates wouldn't steal her stuff, nor for warmth and to exclude the draft -- why build it near the window then? So it must have been built just for cool.
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
I remember visiting my late great-uncle's house in one of the outer islands in Orkney in the early 1970s and it still had a box-bed built into the wall of the living-room.
I suppose that having walls on all but one side made for as cosy a space as you could get.
[ 02. May 2016, 15:13: Message edited by: Piglet ]
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Having a bedfellow means you have human contact, which is a great comfort to some people who are prone to bad dreams or to insomnia caused by stress. I woke up this morning to find Mr. Lamb wrapped around me for exactly this reason, though he had to cross about 3 feet of bedspace to manage it (we do have a kingsize).
In Vietnam (at least when he was growing up) it was quite common for children to share a bed with a parent or grandparent, and when our own LL was sick or having surgery, we copied that practice. It made it so much easier to care for him in the middle of the night, or just to be sure he was still breathing etc.
I suspect a lot depends on culture and on whether you are a person who finds comfort more in human touch or in blessed alone-ness. I was rarely touched while growing up, and developed a huge hunger for it. My son got the touchy feely stuff from birth (despite initially seeming reluctant, as I had done at birth also) and is now a major cuddler.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
I spent the night in a box bed once as a child. It was quite comfortable and cosy.
However:
In a Victorian lodging house you (as a man) might well be spending the night somewhere like this.
If you fell on hard times and went to the workhouse this might be a possibility. They were known as coffin beds for obvious reasons.
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I suppose my historical understanding was that the poor (comparatively) would sleep in the same bed, but the wealthier would not - for all of the reasons mentioned. So why - in the relatively wealthy west - do we still share beds.
I suppose it just puzzles me. And there is some explanation given. I can understand that human contact can be very comforting. I am just puzzled why this is the norm today.
It is not just my situation, BTW. I just find it interesting that we have developed this way, in modern society.
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
In the novel "True Grit", the heroine stays overnight at a boarding house where she must share a bed with an older woman. She requests or insists that the charge should be reduced.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
The modern practice is purely cultural. There was a time when married couples were expected to sleep in separate bedrooms (if they were rich enough). Prince Albert had not only a separate bedroom from Queen Victoria, but he had a dressing room as well that apparently was fully furnished for sleeping as well -- he died in the bed there. Clearly having a separate bedroom suite did not slow down their love life in the slightest.
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
And then I believe that in the 30s, in Britain at least, the smart middle class thing, in necessarily smaller houses, was to have one room but twin beds.
My father was evacuated in 1939 to a small country estate in Kent (below stairs of course). Apparently Colonel and Mrs Mead Waldo, the owners, had separate but adjoining rooms, and if Mrs Mead Waldo was in the mood she would signal it by leaving the connecting door ajar.
[ 02. May 2016, 20:12: Message edited by: Albertus ]
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
My parents certainly had twin (but adjoining) beds.
My mother said it helped her get away from my father's snoring.
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
In the US in the nineteenth century it was common for families with many children to have all the children of the same sex sleep in one large bed. It happened sometimes that one of the children got TB and coughed on his siblings all night. Many of them came down with it also. Then people said what a pity it was that TB ran in that family. (They had no idea how contagious TB was.)
Moo
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
In Canada it was typical for houses to have just 2 rooms when people arrived from Europe to the prairies. The sleeping room and the living room. Children would share beds, and bunk beds were common. Parents stay up in the living/kitchen areas when the kiddies were in bed if they thought they should try to make more kiddies. Unless it was really cold and the baby farm animals were brought into the house. This is not as dramatic as it sounds, sod and partially sod houses were not uncommon until the 1940s.
Cost and warmth were factors as I understand it. The recent norm for nearly everyone in my acquaintance in Canada (1950s forward) is that couples always share a bed. If a couple doesn't, people suspect troubles in the relationship. Though illness and snoring are offered as explanations.
[tangent]
Sharing bathwater could be another topic in this vein. This was common until the mid-1960s. One child after another into the tub, and after soaping up, one pot of water over the head, and Next! Depending on circumstances, mother would go in the middle between the littles and the independent children, but dad was always the last. And it was once a week, after supper, usually Friday or Saturday. It was a joyous pleasure to be steaming warm and chucked into bed beside another warm washed up urchin (Frankly, don't think anyone took off their underwear more than once a week in the winter.)
[/tangent]
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
A fun yet well-researched book on the evolution of privacy in Britain is Holy Sh*t. It looks at the change in naughty language and correlates it to the rise of the concept of privacy. When everybody slept in the same room, and kings gave audience while on the privy, shit was not a naughty word. But with the rise of privacy, these things became things to hide, and hence shameful, and thence coarse language.
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Arabella Purity Winterbottom
Trumpeting hope
# 3434
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
In Canada it was typical for houses to have just 2 rooms when people arrived from Europe to the prairies. The sleeping room and the living room. Children would share beds, and bunk beds were common.
In the original Wellington Cemetery, there is an outline of the original sexton's cottage, which is about 2/3rds of the size of my house. The sexton and his wife brought up 17 children there. I can't imagine they all had separate beds!
In regard to the bathwater tangent, I have a number of pictures of me in the bath with my brother or my cousins when we were little.
In answer to why I sleep with someone - its a great comfort. I'm a terrible sleeper and very restless, my partner can sleep through anything and is a quiet sleeper. I also have nightmares occasionally, and to be able to touch another person and remind myself of reality gives me a sense of security. There are very few arguments in our bed, except when one of us "steals" the bedclothes.
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TomOfTarsus
Shipmate
# 3053
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Posted
My father-in-law, 87 years young last Saturday, was brought up within a few hundred feet of where I now sit in a comfortable, modern home.
All 4 boys slept on one double bed - not sure where the 2 girls slept - and they had to share that with any uncle who came by to visit or looking for work. They had an outhouse and did the Saturday bath thing. Poverty was clearly the issue, though the father worked and was not irresponsible. My father-in-law started working when he was 10, pumping gas, and until he moved out he brought his paycheck home and gave it to his parents. He never finished high school.
They eventually built a new home across the street - indoor plumbing and what-not. The old house was still standing when my kids were young - they called it the "HH" - haunted house. Sneaking down there was one of their forbidden pleasures.
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Graven Image
Shipmate
# 8755
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Posted
Why do we share beds? Because the dog likes sleeping with the rest of the pack. Sorry I could not help myself. Carry on.
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Oh, I'd happily have him in there, but Mrs A wouldn't like it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
My parents certainly had twin (but adjoining) beds.
My mother said it helped her get away from my father's snoring.
When I was living in a flat share we had just one spare (single) bed, in the living room. Consequently when my parents came to visit, my Dad slept in the spare bed, my Mum in mine, and I slept on a camp bed in my room.
Come the morning I am distinctly bleary-eyed, and say to my Dad, “Mum snores.” My Dad says it’s better when you’re in the same bed as her because then you can roll her over and then she stops. It would seem he has some considerable experience in this department ![[Biased]](wink.gif) .
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Screaming "Shut up!" - or poking them sharply in the back also helps. But only temporarily.
Ear plugs. Silicon or wax are best.
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
Not all of us share beds.
I no longer share a bed because my beloved died.
My parents didn't share a bed because they preferred separate rooms - and were fortunate in having parsonage houses of sufficient size to make this possible.
I'm told that at the beginning of their marriage they had adjoining bedrooms, but I can only remember a time when they were at opposite ends of the house ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
As we get older, have more arthritis and consequently toss and turn more, we talk of separate beds, but the dog sleeps between us and would have to make a dreadful choice.
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
Yes, my wife's arthritis is causing problems.
But (a) our bedroom isn't big enough for two single beds (or a big double) and (b) we don't have a dog.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
As you age and need to get up more in the middle of the night for the loo, and then wake up earlier, it must be less easy trying to sneak out of the bed (and the room) in the dark in the small hours without waking someone.
If you're on your own you can just put the light on, mutter something unprintable when you realize what time it is and leave the room without worrying. And if you can't sleep, have the radio on or read a book until you doze off.
I suppose the alternative if you're part of a couple is just to lie there quietly in the dark until you either fall asleep or it's time to get up, whichever happens first.
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
I only share my bed on cold winter nights when Georgie-Porgy fat'n'fluffy deigns to join me. As she drinks by dipping her paws in water, they need to be dried and warmed when she comes in, so any bare human skin makes a good defrosting surface
As a child I embarrassed my mother by asking why she and dad didn't sleep I the same bed like the neighbours did. She said Dad stole all the blankets.
Huia
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
My parents had one of the early dual-control electric blankets. My mother turned her side on, but my father prided himself on not doing it. However, Mother complained that on cold nights he would pull the heated part of the blanket onto himself.
Moo
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
Many people here won't sleep in a bed, preferring a bamboo or plastic sleeping mat on the floor. When we first got my M-i-L a bed she was terrifiex about falling out at night.
I have a 5 foot bed which is about the right size for just little me and the (very occasional) gentleman caller.
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Merchant Trader
Shipmate
# 9007
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
And then I believe that in the 30s, in Britain at least, the smart middle class thing, in necessarily smaller houses, was to have one room but twin beds.
My father was evacuated in 1939 to a small country estate in Kent (below stairs of course). Apparently Colonel and Mrs Mead Waldo, the owners, had separate but adjoining rooms, and if Mrs Mead Waldo was in the mood she would signal it by leaving the connecting door ajar.
Single beds only became popular in the Uk after prudish Hollywood made them popular
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Posts: 1328 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Merchant Trader
Shipmate
# 9007
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
The modern practice is purely cultural. There was a time when married couples were expected to sleep in separate bedrooms (if they were rich enough). Prince Albert had not only a separate bedroom from Queen Victoria, but he had a dressing room as well that apparently was fully furnished for sleeping as well -- he died in the bed there. Clearly having a separate bedroom suite did not slow down their love life in the slightest.
My emphasis would certainly be on "if they were rich enough" when it certainly spiced up the love life (Pr Albert possibly an exception) but may have done nothing for marriage. Think Henry ViIi - not the fact that he had 6 wives but the fact he tried them out first (and others) before getting rid of the previous one.
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... formerly of Muscovy, Lombardy & the Low Countries; travelling through diverse trading stations in the New and Olde Worlds
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
My parents and grandparents (and all my aunts and uncles, come to think of it) used twin beds. They are certainly easier to move than bigger ones. Everyone of my generation is sleeping queen or king-sized -- I don't think these sizes were available until within the past 50 years or so.
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
I seem to recall (and Google isn't helping me) that when Jimmy Carter became President he and Rosalynn were the first First Couple to share a bed in quite a while.
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Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Didn't the second Mrs Wilson say something to the effect that 'when Mr Wilson proposed to me, I was so surprised that I almost fell out of bed!'? Tho' whether they actually slept together, rather than 'slept together' either before or after they married, I don't know.
And I'm sure that JFK often shared a bed- just not with Mrs Kennedy.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Nicolemr
Shipmate
# 28
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Posted
When I was married my husband and I had a queen sized mattress, because he was a a pretty big guy and we didn't fit well in anything smaller. After he left me, I moved and got a new mattress but kept the queen size because it was what I was used to. I enjoy all the space to myself but it does get lonely. The cats (I have three) are bed hogs, but they do keep me company.
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Posts: 11803 | From: New York City "The City Carries On" | Registered: May 2001
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
Michael Arditti, in either The Celibate or Easter, says that sharing beds is what differentiates them from coffins. I think he is suggesting that sharing the space brings life and relationship to a space which is otherwise just where one person loses consciousness.
I can see what he means: I am very conscious, a lot of the time, of the extent to which my bedroom is a rather lifeless space.
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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Jemima the 9th
Shipmate
# 15106
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Posted
Children with a conscientious objection to sleep means much playing of musical beds here. So I usually share a bed, but rarely with my husband.
The first few seconds of the morning are generally spent working out which bed I am in, and with whom....
[ 03. May 2016, 21:05: Message edited by: Jemima the 9th ]
Posts: 801 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2009
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Poppy heads in honey are what you need.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jemima the 9th:
The first few seconds of the morning are generally spent working out which bed I am in, and with whom....
A common problem. I gather. Not for me, of course.
I spend the first few seconds screaming. By the end of that, I generally know whose bed I am in.
For parents of young children, this seems like a perfect reason for not expecting to share beds. A place to offer comfort to someone else, as is the duty of parents (not just mothers).
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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