Couples turning to separate bedrooms for good night's sleep

Master bedrooms are on the way out. Now, most homes don't have one. They have two. And they're known as "his and her realms". An increasing number of couples are insisting on separate bedrooms, according to US housebuilders. Couples and sociologists say that often it has nothing to do with sex. More likely, it has to do with snoring. Or with children crying. Or with getting up and heading for the gym at 5:30 in the morning.

In a survey by the National Association of Home Builders, builders and architects predicted that more than 60% of custom houses would have dual master bedrooms by 2015, according to Gopal Ahluwalia, vice-president of research at the association. Some say more than a quarter of their new projects already do.

This 'home-sleeping-alone' syndrome is not limited to the wealthy. According to the US' National Sleep Foundation, 75 % adults frequently either wake in the night or snore-and many have taken to separate beds just for those reasons. In a report issued Tuesday, the foundation found that more than half the women surveyed, ages 18 to 64, said they slept well only a few nights a week; 43% believed their lack of sleep interfered with the next day's activities.

Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council of Contemporary Families in Chicago, said many couples she interviewed were "confident enough that they have a.nice marriage, but they don't particularly like sleeping in the same room. I don't think it says anything about their sex lives."

The move to separate sleeping spaces is yet another manifestation of changing marital patterns. "Couples today are writing their own script, rewriting how to have a marriage," said Pamela Smock, a University of Michigan sociologist. "The need for separate bedrooms also represents the speed-up of family life-women's roles have changed-and the need for extra space eases the strain on the relationship. It's nothing to do with social class, and it's not necessarily indicative of marital discord."

Nevertheless, Smock said husbands were less willing to change familiar patterns. "Men are supposed to be one, dominant, and two, sexual," she said. "Their wives might be thrilled to have their own bedroom, and see it as a romantic thinggoing back to their romance, going back to dating, to intimacy, but the husband might not see it that way." "As a social pattern, this could increase," she continued. "A lot of people I know fantasize about living in the same apartment building as their husband but in a separate apartment. That could be next."