大象传媒

Mariella Frostrup and her guests examine the hidden politics of the childhood bedroom.

We'd all like our children's bedrooms to be places of peace, of bedtime stories and good night kisses. But often a child's bedroom is an area fraught with tensions. It's the place where children want to be private and put up their own posters, so they can use the space to forge their own identity. Yet parents often battle with their offspring for control of that space too, over issues like tidiness and the time a child actually goes to sleep.

In "Bringing Up Britain" we explore the way in which the notion of the bedroom evolves and changes as children grow. What do youngsters need from their bedrooms and how do they manage to create private spaces when they have to share?

We also investigate the bedroom as a place of night fears - the domain of imaginary monsters and children being scared of the dark.

And we explore how, as divorce rates have increased, children increasingly have two different sleeping spaces in the houses of separated parents. How do they differentiate those bedrooms and what effect does it have on a bedtime routine?

Programme guests are Dr. Sian Lincoln, from John Moores University in Liverpool whose recent book on "Youth Culture and Private Space" explores issues around bedrooms, Simon Williams, professor of Sociology at Warwick University who's investigated the politics of sleeping spaces, psychologist Dr. Pat Spungin, an expert on teenagers and sleeping routines and Professor Russell Foster from Oxford University who specialises in sleep and circadian rhythms.

Producer: Emma Kingsley.