I thought it was just me lol. No doors, no privacy at all. Basically spent my time going to school then working for 4-8 hours at home doing chores. Rarely had time for homework. Never had weekends. Couldn’t go to people’s houses. Couldn’t invite them over because it’s awkward as hell having them sit there while I get screamed at for an hour. Got kicked out at 17 for importing transgender meds and have been a sex worker since (that was maybe half my life ago)

this is abuse, sorry you had to endure that.

Real control freak/abusive thing to do, sorry to anyone who had to deal with this.

Also wasn’t allowed to close the bathroom door. Or really any door ever

wtf. not ok

I was allowed a door but the locks were switched so I couldn’t lock it from the inside but they could keep me locked in. Good times.

ever since i realized this was a somewhat common thing through american media i can only repeat this again and again: americans are out of their fucking mind.

oh no that’s abusive, children deserve privacy.

I had a door until i refused to unlock it one night around 15yo when my drunk abusive father wanted to hurt me over some transgression. He punched a hole through the door with his hands and then ripped it off the hinges while screaming he was going to kill me. I had called a friend who was on the phone with me and going to call 911 if he hurt me and that made him back off that night but the door just got left off, and it was ‘my fault’ that I no longer had one.

This was a thing my parents always threatened my siblings & I with if we slammed our doors when they told us to go to our rooms and they did take my brother & I’s bedroom door away for slamming it one time, but we were not really old enough to value privacy at that point (I was 9 iirc but may have been a year or two younger) and because we shared the room it was collective punishment (to my brother’s detriment because iirc it was me who slammed the door and caused my dad to take it off the hinges) so it was put back on like two days later and it was never done again.

We moved when I was in middle school and I got a bedroom all to myself with a door that actually locked, which I naively thought would keep my parents out until the first time they stuck a toothpick through the pinhole on the other side and pushed the lock out of place. Funnily enough though the way my closet was positioned near the bedroom door, if you opened the closet door all the way it would prevent the bedroom door from opening more than an inch or two - which I discovered after the first time my parents barged in on me sitting naked at my desk at like 3am circa 2008 looking at porn. By the time I was in high school I’d pretty much forgone locking my door or buying myself a minute or two by blocking it with the closet door because I knew my parents would wind up barging in whenever they wanted and instead started making them regret doing so with shit like “hi mom thanks for bursting in without knocking, why do I need to put on underwear and a shirt I’m just sitting here playing the PS3??”

Was actually a big reason why I was so desperate to get out of the house as soon as I turned 18!

For a few years I lived in a “room” that was a sort of entrance/porch that we used a curtain to block off. It was because we didn’t have enough rooms in the house. Not as punishment or a form of control.

I had a friend who’s 4 bedroom house had 13 children in it. His parents were Italian Catholics. So I don’t think anyone had their own room. He slept on a sofa for years and had almost no property but his clothes and guitar and emancipated himself legally at the age of 16. He’s a chef in Hawaii now.

I didn’t get to have a door because my bedroom was actually a walk-in closet/storage room. I don’t think it was that I wasn’t allowed to have a door so much as that my dad (who installed the kitchen and all the cabinetry in the small house) didn’t feel like taking off the molding around the doorway to put a door on it. I was always told it wasn’t possible for some reason.

But when I was 13 we were able to move to a new place where I actually had a real bedroom with a door. I remember feeling like I had “arrived” and finally knew what it was like for the normal/rich kids (who were the same thing in my mind back then). That was a good age to finally get some privacy, for obvious reasons, but before that I didn’t really mind not having a door, I had a lot of anxiety problems even as a really young kid and would often just go sleep on the floor next to my parents bed. Any desire for privacy was nothing compared to the fear of being alone and disconnected, and I thought a door would have made that worse.

I was definitely threatened with it, and I think it might have been for a bit? I don’t remember why exactly, depression has effected my memory a lot. It’s possible it was for masturbating but it might have just been for something else. I’d actually forgotten about it.

Privacy and alone time has always been really important to me, probably partially because I’m autistic (not that it’s not for NTs).

The other big traumatic thing I remember is my dad threatening to take away/destroy my comfort item/stim, I’d cry and cry when he’d do that. I still have and use it.

I had a door but it had to be open at all times so my mom could lay in bed and talk down to me telling me how worthless I am, how I’m stupid. She would always do it under her breath but loud enough that I could hear to antagonize me. If I closed the door or said something she would scream at me that she didn’t say anything or that I need to respect my parents. Anyways that’s one of the many reasons why I haven’t spoken to my family in years.

You had a bedtime at 18? How old were you when you moved out if you don’t mind me asking?

Dragging up some old bad memories for me here. They took my door because of bad grades and I was constantly grounded to my room as well. I still will just hide out in my room even though I own the house I live in and live alone.

I grew up in a place where my room just didn’t have walls, or a door. Just a staircase going up to my “room”, and a wooden rail into the rest of the building. Had three other walls at least. My moms befroom also didn’t have walls though. Was just the curcumstances of the physical space we were living in. Not parental cruelty.

We also have the fun, classic part of winter, where only two rooms(kitchen, Living room) are heated(with an early 20th century wooden stove) and we are all sitting on top of each other for months. Though we children slept with our parents in a bed till we were 10 anyway. So, like, a private bed was already a luxury, in context.