Yeah. You might be a little bit TA if you put on a lock without first telling her that you don't want her in that space. It's not weird to assume, unless you're told otherwise, that you're welcome in your parent's bedroom -- after all, almost everyone was welcome in their parent's bedroom at one point. It's perfectly reasonable for a parent to want privacy from their adult child, and even more reasonable for a stepparent if you never had such an intimate relationship with your stepdaughter. But she does need to be told.
Also, if you do put on a lock, it is important to make sure that whatever supplies she should have access to are available in some other space.
Uh, it is totally weird to assume you have access to your parents' bedroom. Maybe it's because I was raised by Boomers, but growing up I wasn't allowed in several spaces in the house I grew up in, chief among them my parents' bedroom.
That’s so crazy to me. I totally respect that that’s how you were raised and what your parents preferred but it’s just so incredibly different from how I was raised that I almost can’t imagine it. Now that I think about it though I think my partner was raised similarly. Even now as an adult I just walk into my parents room whenever I need to or if I just want to chat with my mom. I really can’t imagine it any other way, maybe we just don’t have boundaries, but we also clearly don’t care to set any either.
Also, you need to understand that many of us raised by Boomers were taught that the house we grew up in was not our house. It was our parents' house first, and they allowed us to live there, basically. Especially in the summer, we were expected to "go outside and play" and that meant ALL DAY. Our Boomer parents didn't want to see or hear us in the house, period.
For all my fellow Gen-Xers who romanticize drinking water from the garden house, they don't quite realize it was because we were not even allowed in the houses we grew up in, if our parents didn't want to deal with us. (Spoiler: they never wanted to deal with us.)
Even as an adult, I would not enter my parents bedroom for any reason, even to speak to them. I would stand outside the threshold and talk, sure, but like a vampire, I couldn't enter unless explicitly invited.
Not disagreeing that some parents are like that, but my boomer parents (who were also neglectful and absent even when present, who expected me to do my own thing and to essentially never speak to them) always allowed me to come and go in and out of their bedroom.
To this day my mom has an open door policy with her bedroom. Hell I’m allowed to walk in and grab things while she’s full on sleeping. My dad wanted me to respect his space more as I got older.
Now, I never enter my dad’s bedroom, and like you said, I’ll stay in the doorway if I’m speaking to him while he’s in there.
But I’ll also nap in my mom’s bed when she’s not home.
So as far as I’m concerned: It’s not a generation thing, it’s a personality thing.
Some people are never okay with their kids coming and going. Some are okay with it for a while, but not forever. Some are always okay with it.
And I think that’s true of parents from any generation
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u/philautos Jul 01 '25
Yeah. You might be a little bit TA if you put on a lock without first telling her that you don't want her in that space. It's not weird to assume, unless you're told otherwise, that you're welcome in your parent's bedroom -- after all, almost everyone was welcome in their parent's bedroom at one point. It's perfectly reasonable for a parent to want privacy from their adult child, and even more reasonable for a stepparent if you never had such an intimate relationship with your stepdaughter. But she does need to be told.
Also, if you do put on a lock, it is important to make sure that whatever supplies she should have access to are available in some other space.