Is Children’s Sleep Connected to How Their Parents Sleep?
Is Children’s Sleep Connected to How Their Parents Sleep?
This study examined whether young children’s sleep is connected to how their mothers and fathers sleep.
What We Did and Why We Did It
Researchers studied 43 families in the Guelph Family Health Study, including mothers, fathers, and their young children aged 18 months to under 6 years. Each child and both parents wore a small movement tracker for seven days to measure their sleep, including:
- How long they slept
- When they fell asleep and when they woke up
Parents and children share daily routines, so their sleep may be connected. Earlier research using parent questionnaires suggested children’s sleep might be tied more closely to mothers than fathers. Researchers wanted to test this using accurate movement trackers rather than questionnaires.
What we found
What we can learn from this
Children’s sleep was connected to both parents, not just mothers:
- When children fell asleep and woke up later, their mothers and fathers tended to do the same.
- Children who slept longer also had fathers who slept longer.
Unlike earlier studies, this one found that children’s sleep was linked to both mothers and fathers. Children’s sleep habits appear to be tied to the whole family, so supporting healthy sleep routines for everyone in the household may help the whole family sleep better.
Limitations
This was a small, preliminary study and a snapshot taken at one point in time, so it cannot show cause and effect. Most participating families were White and from higher-income households, so the findings may not apply to all families.
Read the full article published here:
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