Original written by Leo S. 🙏🏼 in 2019. Updated 2026
Imagine inviting your sweetheart over for a romantic evening, only to have your parents tie you up in a sack, put you to bed beside them, and place a wooden board between your bodies to make sure nothing untoward happens during the night. It might sound like a particularly elaborate form of parental punishment, or the plot of a forgotten historical comedy, but for generations of young people in parts of Britain, Ireland and colonial America, this was a surprisingly familiar part of courtship.
The practice was known as bundling, and although its details varied from place to place, its basic principle was remarkably consistent: two young people who were romantically interested in one another were allowed to spend the night together in bed, provided they remained fully clothed and, ideally, physically separated.
It was intimacy with an extraordinary number of precautions — a curious compromise between youthful desire and parental anxiety.
The custom was particularly associated with rural communities from the 16th through the 18th centuries, although its exact origins and geographical spread remain somewhat uncertain.
In some accounts, it involved a young woman being placed inside a large cloth sack, tied around her waist or even up to her neck, while her feet were secured to prevent any inconvenient escape. Her suitor would then climb into bed beside her, usually retaining at least some of his clothes. In other versions, both participants were bundled into separate coverings, leaving little room for physical contact.
And if a sack did not seem sufficiently reassuring, there was always the wooden board.
Known as a bundling board, or sometimes replaced by a long bolster, this ingenious piece of furniture was placed down the middle of the bed, creating a physical barrier between the prospective bride and groom. It was essentially a medieval version of a relationship safety feature: conversation was encouraged, companionship was permitted, but certain forms of affection were strictly discouraged.
The arrangement might seem absurdly uncomfortable to modern eyes, but it made sense within a very different understanding of family life, privacy and marriage.
For much of early modern Europe and colonial America, the bedroom was not the intensely private sanctuary we imagine today.
It was often a multifunctional space where family members slept, visitors were entertained, children were born and everyday domestic activities took place. Privacy was a luxury, particularly in modest rural households where several generations might share limited living quarters.
Under these circumstances, allowing a young couple to spend a night together was not necessarily considered scandalous. On the contrary, it could be regarded as a practical way of getting to know a potential marriage partner, provided the parents maintained control over the situation.
The ritual generally began when a young man expressed an interest in a girl and her family approved of the courtship. He would be invited to the family home, often on a Saturday evening, and the couple would eventually be allowed to retire to bed. This was not an entirely private encounter, however. The parents were usually nearby, and the young woman might be prepared for the occasion with the traditional sack and other protective measures.
In some communities, the arrangement was even considered a respectable way for couples to discover whether they were compatible before making a lifelong commitment.
After all, marriage was a serious business, and a young woman might have very few opportunities to spend time alone with a potential husband. Bundling offered something unusual for its time: the chance to talk for hours, share secrets, discover one another’s personalities and experience a small taste of domestic life before the wedding.
There was, however, an important distinction between the ideal and reality.
No matter how carefully a couple was wrapped, tied or separated, a shared bed was still a shared bed. And human nature, as generations of anxious parents would discover, was not always particularly obedient.
Although the practice was defended as a respectable courtship tradition, religious authorities frequently viewed it with suspicion. Some preachers believed that allowing unmarried couples to sleep together was an invitation to temptation, regardless of how many layers of clothing or pieces of wood stood between them. The religious concern was not merely theoretical: premarital pregnancies did occur, and the consequences could be serious, particularly for women whose reputations and future marriage prospects depended heavily on their sexual respectability.
Colonial America developed a particularly complicated relationship with bundling.
In some communities, it was accepted as an ordinary social custom, while in others it became a subject of moral outrage. The practice was especially associated with rural New England, where long winters, limited heating and crowded households made sharing a bed seem considerably more practical than romantic.
One of the most persistent explanations for bundling is, in fact, economic rather than sentimental. Heating a house during a freezing winter was expensive, and beds were not always plentiful. Sharing a mattress could save fuel and provide warmth, making the arrangement an attractive solution for families with limited resources. A young couple might therefore have been permitted to bundle not simply because their parents approved of romance, but because keeping warm was a matter of common sense.
There are even accounts suggesting that bundling arrangements were sometimes extended to travellers. An early nineteenth-century dictionary of slang described the practice as an American custom in which husbands and parents occasionally allowed visitors to share a bed with their wives or daughters when accommodation was scarce. In some households, beds were apparently designed with removable boards so that one sleeping space could be divided into separate sections. What began as a courtship arrangement could, under the right circumstances, become an ingenious form of domestic hospitality.
But the tradition had another possible cultural explanation, one rooted in biblical storytelling. Some historians have connected bundling with the Book of Ruth, particularly the episode in which Ruth approaches Boaz at the threshing floor.
Ruth, a widow, seeks protection and a future with Boaz, a wealthy landowner and relative of her deceased husband. They spend the night together in a setting that is intimate but not explicitly sexual, and their relationship eventually leads to marriage.
The biblical story may have helped provide a religious justification for the idea that a man and a woman could share a sleeping space without necessarily compromising their virtue. Whether it directly inspired bundling is impossible to establish, but the parallel is intriguing: intimacy, trust and the possibility of marriage, all within the boundaries of social and religious expectations.
Of course, the most entertaining aspect of bundling is the fact that its safeguards were not always successful. Contemporary critics were quick to point out that putting two young people in the same bed, even fully dressed, was hardly a foolproof strategy for preserving chastity. A satirical poem circulated in the period mocked precisely this contradiction, describing a couple who went to bed covered from head to toe, only to end up with an unexpected pregnancy.
Such stories were more than amusing anecdotes.
A pregnancy before marriage could bring considerable pressure on both families, and marriage was often arranged quickly to protect the woman’s reputation and establish the father’s responsibility. In communities where social acceptance mattered as much as formal religious or legal recognition, an impending child could accelerate a relationship that might otherwise have remained in the courtship stage.
Interestingly, attitudes towards premarital intimacy were not uniform across Europe. In some lower-income communities, particularly in parts of early modern England, informal agreements between families and the public recognition of a couple’s commitment could carry considerable weight. Marriage customs were not always governed by the strict, uniform standards that later generations would imagine. Economic necessity, local traditions and social class all influenced what was considered acceptable.
By the nineteenth century, however, bundling was increasingly regarded as an embarrassing relic of an earlier, less refined society. Victorian moral attitudes placed greater emphasis on sexual restraint, female respectability and the separation of unmarried men and women. At the same time, changing ideas about domestic privacy transformed the bedroom into a more secluded and intimate space. Improved heating also made the practical argument for sharing a bed less compelling.
What had once been regarded in certain communities as an ordinary, if unconventional, way of courting gradually became an object of fascination, ridicule and moral condemnation.
Yet bundling was not entirely forgotten. During the 1960s, the custom briefly attracted renewed interest in some conservative Christian circles in the United States. For young couples seeking an alternative to the increasingly casual dating culture of the period, the idea of supervised bed-sharing was presented as a wholesome way to enjoy companionship without crossing sexual boundaries. A tongue-in-cheek movement even emerged under the name The Society to Bring Back Bundling, reflecting both nostalgia and the era’s ongoing debates about sexual morality.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this peculiar tradition is that, beneath the sacks, boards and parental supervision, there was something rather modern about its underlying idea. For centuries, marriage in many societies had been largely shaped by family interests, financial arrangements and social expectations. The opportunity to spend time with a potential spouse and decide whether the relationship felt right was not always guaranteed.
Bundling offered young people a limited but meaningful degree of freedom. They could talk, laugh, whisper into the darkness and discover whether they actually enjoyed one another’s company. It was hardly a romantic escape, but it did allow affection and personal choice to play a role in a decision that could determine the rest of their lives.
In that sense, the bundling bed was a strange transitional space between arranged marriage and modern romance: a place where parental authority and individual desire were forced to coexist, separated by little more than a wooden plank.
Today, the thought of climbing into bed with someone while wearing a sack and being monitored by their parents sounds like a particularly effective way to kill a budding romance. Yet perhaps we should give our ancestors a little credit. They were trying, in their own peculiar way, to solve a problem that has never entirely disappeared: how to let young people fall in love while keeping them out of trouble.
Their solution involved ropes, sacks, boards and a considerable amount of parental optimism. It may not have been the most comfortable dating experience in history, but at least nobody had to worry about awkward morning-after texts. After all, when your parents are sleeping just a few feet away, there is very little chance of ghosting anyone.
Images from web – Google Research