The complexity of parent-child cosleeping: researching cultural beliefs. (Special Issue).

Publication: Mothering

Publication Date: 01-SEP-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Mothering Magazine

Controversies concerning parent-child cosleeping abound in both the popular parenting advice literature and professional scientific literature. Previous researchers have suggested that an understanding of the familial and cultural context of children's sleep might help resolve some of the controversy. The two studies described here are attempts to explore the context of cosleeping.

Why Do Some Families Share Sleep?

Anthropologists have observed that cosleeping is common in collectivistic cultures (where the needs of the group are considered more important than the needs of individual group members), and solitary sleep is common in individualistic cultures (where the needs of individuals generally overshadow the needs of the larger group). (1,2,3,4) Some people assume that the relationship between sleep and belief systems generalizes to specific families--that parents of solitary-sleeping children endorse individualism and want their children to learn to sleep alone so they will learn to behave independently. Alternatively, the reasoning goes, parents of cosleeping children endorse collectivism and share sleep specifically to teach children that families function, even in sleep, as a whole rather than as separate individuals.

To test the truth of this assumption, I surveyed 215 mothers with a child between the ages of six months and five years. (5) I asked them about their family sleeping arrangements and their beliefs with regard to individualism and collectivism. The mothers were recruited from childcare facilities in two California cities.

The majority of mothers (63 percent) endorsed cosleeping for newborns, but endorsement was much less common (15 percent) for toddlers and quite rare (5 percent) for preschoolers. Black mothers were more likely than white mothers to endorse cosleeping, with Latinas in the middle. Single mothers were more likely than married mothers to endorse cosleeping. Mothers...

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