The Kids Who Have It All
Often Have Half a Room

October 29, 2004 -- Eleni and Markos Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis live on a two-acre riverfront property, in an 8,000-square-foot home with soaring glass windows, two kitchens and a swimming pool. Bedrooms? They have six -- more than enough for the Sacramento, Calif., couple and their two sons, Neo, age 3, and Eon, 2. But the boys room together, in a bedroom just about big enough for two twin beds and a nightstand.

"They have to learn to share," says Mrs. Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, head of a land-development firm. Otherwise, they'll grow up to be "little czars."

For kids who have it all, some parents have a new surprise -- they get to have half a bedroom. Even as U.S. homes get larger and megamansions promise separate rooms for everyone, some affluent parents are deciding that the best way to instill character is to make their kids bunk together. In San Francisco, real-estate agent Steven Mavromihalis says roughly one-third of families buying $3 million-plus homes are having kids share rooms, about twice the level of five years ago. And in Hinsdale, Ill., Coldwell Banker agent Carol Lee Cikanek has seen a similar increase, particularly with big families: More parents who put their kids together out of necessity when they lived in smaller houses, she says, are keeping the arrangement when they move to bigger ones.

In part, kid consolidation is an extension of the no-spoiling school of child-rearing: The idea, championed by recent books like "Choking on the Silver Spoon" and "Too Much of a Good Thing," is that affluent parents can "bratproof" their kids even though they're rich enough to spoil them. Parents are also putting kids together because they have other designs on rooms -- like his-and-hers offices. And ironically, big houses themselves may be forcing the issue, as parents use room-sharing as a way to counter McMansions' sprawling coldness. "You can lose your kids in that large a space," says Barbara J. Howard, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Wealthy families have little need to bunk children together, of course. Last year, married couples with kids had an average of 1.92 children, a level that has remained steady for the past decade. Meanwhile, 37% of new homes sold had at least four bedrooms, according to the National Association of Home Builders, up from less than one-third in 1995.

But many parents say that bunking together was good enough for them, so it'll be good for their children. Lori Benson says that she and her older sister shared a room in Brockton, Mass., until they were teenagers -- and that the two were "best friends." So when Ms. Benson and her husband, Neil, moved from a Brooklyn apartment to a five-bedroom house in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., last year, they told 5-year-old Oliver and 3-year-old Alex that it would be a "privilege" to share a room. It worked, Ms. Benson says, and the boys get along so well that sometimes bedtime is "a pure gigglefest." The family plans to continue the arrangement, she says, for "as long as I can get them to do it."

While experts say that room-sharing probably won't hurt, they disagree over the extent to which it can make kids into better people. Over the past two decades, studies have shown that children with siblings generally have a leg up in developing such skills as negotiating and compromising. But there's little research showing that room-sharing enhances the effect. Pediatricians say that at the very least, kids often sleep better when a sibling is in a room, and some believe it helps strengthen sibling bonds. The American Academy of Pediatrics takes no position on the issue.

'Self-Centered Materialists'

But the danger, psychologists say, is that parents may treat room-sharing as a simple fix to more complex childrearing issues. "If the parents are raising little self-centered materialists, then making them sleep in the same room is just tokenism," says William Doherty, a professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota. And demonstrating that you can set limits on kids may only result in resentment, particularly if children feel they're being deprived so Mom and Dad can indulge their own desires for, say, a media room.

Lorne and Elizabeth Richmond of Seattle say it's a good way to teach their kids to get along and make choices. When the couple lived in a three-bedroom house, their son had one room and their two daughters shared the other. When they traded up two years ago to a five-bedroom home, Mr. Richmond says they decided to keep one room for Gabrielle, 9, and Eliana, 8. The girls are learning how to divvy up limited space when friends sleep over, Mr. Richmond says, and they negotiate which station to play on their shared radio. (Eliana says the system is OK -- as long as their little brother can't move in -- and Gabrielle says that even when the sisters fight, they "sometimes just forget about it" and go to sleep.)

"There's a sense that as a family we share things instead of getting whatever you want whenever you want it," Mr. Richmond says. Of course, Mr. Richmond got something he wanted: One of the extra bedrooms is a recreation room with a pool table, wine-storage area, surround-sound stereo system and flat-screen TV. "It worked out well for me." he says.

In fact, room-sharing arrangements often free up rooms that parents can use otherwise. Scott Ukrop, a partner in a design and building firm in Richmond, Va., says that as little as 18 months ago, half of his residential-addition projects resulted in extra bedrooms for doubled-up kids -- but now, he says, only about 40% end up giving kids their own rooms. Instead, parents are a bit more likely to expand their master bedrooms or add upstairs laundry facilities. "There's a feeling that for children to have the same bedroom, it's a character-building type of thing," he says.

College Indicator

And it may even be a résumé builder: Some college officials say kids who share rooms may have an easier time adjusting to dorm life -- and college in general. Adam Weinberg, dean of the college at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., says that about 90% of freshmen who enter the school have never shared a room, and before the year is over nearly one-third will have lodged roommate complaints. Among those who have shared rooms before, he says, complaints are lower. Parents having their kids share rooms "are doing colleges a huge favor," he says.

Of course, the arrangement can't go on forever. Linda Clifford of Sacramento remembers when her son Brian, then 11, laid duct-tape from one end of the room to the other, creating a line which brother Matthew, then 9, was forbidden to cross. (The line actually deprived Matthew of access to the door, leaving the second-floor bedroom window as his only exit.) She put the boys in separate rooms. Says Ms. Clifford, a construction-company executive, "It definitely improved the relationship."

Email your comments to rjeditor@dowjones.com.