Why can two adults share a bed,but a child must sleep alone?

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First of all, let me make it clear that this question is strictly hypothetical. I was reading another parenting forum, and it was talking about co-sleeping. Different people posted different views on co-sleeping, but it had a interesting dialog snippet.
Daughter: I want to sleep in your bed tonight. I don't want to sleep in my room.
Dad: You have a beautiful princess bed that I bought for you. So that's where you need to sleep, by yourself, and you're welcome to take a stuffed animal. Remember: big girls sleep by themselves in their own beds.
Daughter: But you and mommy get to sleep together all the time.
Dad: (speechless)

It's a perfectly reasonable concern, because it makes no sense to most young children. It's almost a paradox, if you think about it: two adults, who have the emotional maturity to deal with nighttime fears, and free access to alcohol and medication if they can't fall asleep, get to have a companion; but a child, who's still learning that darkness is nothing to fear, still learning to fall asleep properly, and still has to rely on their own underdeveloped mental defenses in dealing with nightmares, must sleep all alone in an big room. Where's the logic?

So, how would you respond to the question "Why can you and your spouse sleep together, but a child must sleep alone?". Of course, an adult would know why , but how would you answer that question to a child? In other words, fill in the "(speechless)" part of the dialog snippet.

Daughter: I want to sleep in your bed tonight. I don't want to sleep in my room.
Dad: You have a beautiful princess bed that I bought for you. So that's where you need to sleep, by yourself, and you're welcome to take a stuffed animal. Remember: big girls sleep by themselves in their own beds.
Daughter: But you and mommy get to sleep together all the time.
Dad: That's because we're married and married couples are allowed to sleep together.


I think I would explain this to any age range.

Much to my immense disappointment, mommy sleeps alone too.

And, mommy would rather sleep alone because her 9 year old hogs the bed, kicks off the covers, and talks in his sleep. Not only that... but on occasion, mommy would like clothing to be an option not a requirement.

While I never felt the desire to co-sleep when I was little, if I were the daughter in the scenario, that answer would only make me want to marry a boy my age as soon as I could, and forge my parents' signature (unsuccessfully, but still) to make it happen . Of course, then my parents would have to answer the "why can't I get married?" question, but that's beyond the scope of this thread. But seriously, I think a lot of only children perceive the inherent unfairness in the double standard of sleeping arrangements.

Adults don't want children to sleep with them so they can have enough room in bed and have sex. I don't think it has anything to do with the actual age otherwise.

Sex is a definite plus. I personally like to have the option.

Ever see those families on WifeSwap where they all sleep in the same room and there's like 9 kids.. I always wonder when and where exactly were those children conceived.
I think another important thing to consider is that eventually we move out of our parent's home and it's a good idea to learn to sleep alone as I personally don't want my son to feel that he has to have a bed mate every night.. Also, there comes a point when it's just weird to have your kid sleeping with you. Where do you draw the line? 3, 5, 10, 15... ?

Excellent question, with no satisfactory answer. personally i have always in my heart suspected this is wrong. its natural for a child to want to feel safe and secure by being near the parents. We keep them in their own beds for our own selfish reasons i guess.

I have always co-slept. My 2 angels have their own beds in my room if they choose to use them, otherwise we are all snuggelled in together. Even my ex comments that he misses us all in bed together the most.

I think it is actually really lovely to wake up with my 2 children and myself entwined in a giant hug.

Also sex doesn't have to happen in bed

We co-slept until my son was five, then he got his own bed in my room. When he was six he decided he wanted to have sleepovers. I explained sleepovers weren't kosher in my bedroom and that when he was ready to move his bed to his own room he could have sleepovers. When he was 6.5 he moved his bed to his own room and had "sleepovers" in my room on Friday nights. After a while, he stopped the sleepovers in my room.

I'm scared of grown up people who can't think of anywhere to have sex outside of a bed, personally. But that's just me.

there is no rule that says children have to sleep alone. there are entire cultures where they dont and the family sleeps in the same room. sleeping alone is something we have developed as a culture and is still a fairly recent event. i tend to think part had to do with how wealth was exhibited in earlier centuries, most people had small houses with few bedrooms and children shared rooms, but the wealthy built huge houses and it was a luxury to have your own bedroom. so more people aspired to have separate bedrooms.

we have co-slept with all our children. the oldest co-slept until he was just over a year. the middle until he was 2 and his little brother was about to be born, and we kicked the middle child out to sleep in his big brothers room, which they both loved. and the youngest is 5 and apart from a 6 month stint sleeping with the middle brother, he still sleeps with us due to sleep issues. the oldest who co-slept the least and shared a room the least is the only one who has had real issues with being afraid to sleep or be alone in various parts of the house, the other two dont have the same level of fears, altho it could be due solely to personality.

as a mother, i cant see cradling a child in your womb for 9 months where they hear your voice and heartbeat and are surrounded by you, then bringing them out into the cold scary bright world, and stuffing them into their own room to sleep alone. that just doesnt make sense to me.

as for why parents want to sleep alone.... i call my youngest the "mommy seeking missle" because at night, no matter where he starts out, even in his own room, he ends up smooshed against me. after a few consecutive nights of knees in my spine, i literally cannot function well enough to walk upright. so yeah, as much as i love watching him sleep and believe in co-sleeping, some mornings i would like to feel my actual age and not 102 and in need of a walker.

Mine "cocoons" himself in the covers. Doesn't matter what season. Then he sweats profusely but "isn't too hot." When he was in my bed, he would inevitably sleep and sweat on my side of the bed (at least in part) and when it was time for me to go to bed I would end up having to sleep in a patch of wet kid sweat. Eww.

My older daughter conducts birthing classes and works as a midwife's assistant, and she talks about those kinds of things ... and you are completely correct there. Some people think it is dangerous for a mother and child (baby) to be in the same bed, but mothers (unless drunk or something) instinctually protect their babies while sleeping.

azure is also very spot on when it comes to the whole idea of your "own room." How privileged we are to be able to suggest everyone should sleep in their "own room!" That's a phenomenon in the Western world that the majority of the world's population don't ever experience.

"Because when the three of us sleep together, it's too crowded, and I can't sleep. When I can't sleep - I am grouchy. When I am grouchy, I don't have patience to be a good mom."

Personally, I don't have an issue with the idea, it's the sleeping that needs to happen. What I do to manage this is lay with DS and give him the cuddle that he needs, and then go to my own bed after he's asleep. When DH is out of town, I am fine with DS in my bed, because I get a full night's sleep.

It is only about the sex in a very minor way. If DS needed to sleep with us, AND we all could sleep well - the grownups could figure out a solution for the sex.

All of that said, I always felt that he would grow out of this as my NT son did. What I'm surprised to find is that my 11 year old AS guy, doesn't seem to be growing out of it.

We had to sleep with our son until he was 4. He decided he wanted "a bed with one pillow" like his friends. We let him know that it meant he had to sleep alone. We had a period of one of us sleeping on his floor until he got accustomed, and now he still gets one of us in the room till he goes to sleep, but he spends the night alone.

It depends so much on the family's needs and the child's needs. My daughter has never really slept with us. I had assumed she would, but she actually can't really sleep with someone else there.

To each their own. I really did enjoy having my boy in our bed until he started to somehow manage to take up half of a king size bed all by himself! I am now pleased to have my kids come in to cuddle JUST in the morning.

Mine doesn't "grow out of" a lot of things. I wanted to be the child-led breastfeeding mother and when my son was three I'd really exhausted myself in more than one way. I told him that he really didn't need it anymore, that we could still have lots of cuddling time but that he was a big kid now and he was completely cool with that. I honestly think he'd have continued for another couple of years if I hadn't said something. I know folks do that but it wasn't for me. I didn't push him out of my room, I did push him out of my bed for sleeping reasons. I again had to explain logically why it worked better for me (ie. grumpy mum is no fun to be around) and how we could make it work for him. My son is also not terribly modest like a lot of NT kids, for that matter. He's only recently (two years later than NT peers) developed a need for some privacy when he gets dressed or uses the toilet. Alternately mine doesn't "grow into" a lot of things his same-age peers do. I think it helps to talk about it logically with him, at least that is what works in our family. If you're an open enough parent to have your child in your bed and not have an issue about it, but you're ready for them to move on, maybe just talking about it without assigning any negatives to it. "I really need to sleep and I am having a hard time sleeping because x,y,z, how can we find a way to be close and together without sleeping in the same bed?" sort of worked for me.