One significant function of childhood hiding places is the creation of a place to be private — be it a blanket "fort" in the playroom, a tree house at the bottom of the garden, or an area of flattened-out grass in the middle of a meadow. If our dwellings in adulthood are those settings where we are most at liberty to be ourselves, where we don't have to put up any facades, then this process clearly begins in childhood. Such strivings for a place to be private become especially urgent in the years just prior to puberty.
— Clare Cooper Marcus, House as a Mirror of Self