The possibility of personal privacy (places where one can retreat from contact with others) creates the opportunity for people to come to see themselves as distinctly different from each other, as unique selves with unique experiences, ideas, values, etc. For many American teens, their own bedroom at home is a unique environment whose privacy is sacrosanct. The private bedroom is special enclave of the self decorated with artifacts that represent core values and interests of the emerging self. The emerging self is literally projected into the objects and decorations, the room functioning as a kind of laboratory of the self. Such would obviously not be possible in an environment in which the bedroom was shared with others.

It may be hard for modern Americans to imagine that privacy was not always part of life, but consider this depiction of a 15th century European hotel. Men are openly naked and share a dormatory rooom and even get into bed with each other. How would you feel about an arrangement like this the next time you check into a hotel? Our modern experience of intense embarrassment with such public exposure provides powerful evidence of how important the sense of self as private has become.

Anthony Giddens has written of the modern "sequestration" of experience --- our experience is uniquely our own and occurs within a self system that is unknown to most other people. He suggests that modern life has become such a private phenomenon that we are constantly challenged to overcome the gulf of experience and outlook that separates our self from others.

The house below was a common design in Colonial New England. It consists of two rooms only. The entire family would sleep together in one of the rooms and were constantly in each other's presence while at home. Of course since this was a predominantly agricultural society where subsistence farming was the rule, in most cases the family was together working the farm when not together in the house.

A local example of this kind of house -- the John Maby house -- can be found just west of Schenectady, New York in the town of Rotterdam Junction, about 20 miles from UAlbany. Now maintained by the Schenectady County Historical Society the Maby house dates from 1670 and can be viewed by appointment. Imagine what it would have been like to grow up in a house in which the entire family slept in the same room. How do you think that would have influenced the kind of person you became?