Infant Sleep and the Quality of Family Life for First-Time Parents of Three-Month-Old Infants

Abstract

While it is widely recognized that sleep patterns in early infancy can affect the quality of family life, studies have focused primarily on sleep problems that emerge in later infancy. Further, researchers have tended to conceptualize the quality of family life primarily in terms of the psychological functioning of the mother and have thus ignored the experiences of fathers. Grounded in a family systems framework, this study explores the relationship between nighttime infant sleep duration, infant negativity, psychological and relational functioning in first-time parents of three-month-old infants. Infant sleep duration was significantly associated with father's reports of parenting stress, family functioning and infant negativity. Infant sleep duration was related to fathers' psychological functioning with fathers whose infants slept for shorter periods reporting higher levels of distress than fathers whose infants slept for longer periods of time. Contrary to expectations, neither mothers' psychological functioning, nor mothers' or fathers' ratings of relational functioning were significantly associated with infant sleep duration. These results highlight the importance of studying the influences of normal infant behaviors on new parents and of expanding the study of early infant development beyond a focus on the mother-child dyad.

Associations between infant temperament, maternal stress, and infants’ sleep across the first year of life

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study to find a relation between temperament and sleep latency during the first 6 months, results that are consistent with recent research demonstrating temperament in late infancy is associated with sleep latency in early childhood (Gartstein, Potapova, & Hsu, 2014). However, the present study failed to replicate previous studies finding a relation between infant temperament and sleep duration measures, likely due to differences in age (Kaley et al, 2012; Loutzenhiser & Sevigny, 2008) and the temperament dimensions (Spruyt et al, 2008) used in those studies compared to the current study.…”

“…Specifically, negative or difficult infant temperament has been associated with shorter sleep duration, particularly at night (Loutzenhiser & Sevigny, 2008; Weissbluth, 1981), and more night wakings (Weinraub et al, 2012) compared to positive or easy infant temperament, which has conversely been associated with greater night and total sleep duration (Kaley et al, 2012; Spruyt et al, 2008). In contrast, some studies report weak or no associations between temperament and sleep (e.g., Anders et al, 1992; DeLeon & Karraker, 2007; Scher, Tirosh, & Lavie, 1998), which may be the result of age-dependent changes in this relation (Spruyt et al, 2008; Weinraub et al, 2012), or temperament’s differential relation with active compared to quiet sleep (Parslow et al, 2002).…”

“…Mothers and fathers perceive and are impacted by their infants’ temperament and sleep behaviors differentially (e.g., Keener, Zeanah, & Anders, 1988; Loutzenhiser & Sevigny, 2008; Sinai & Tikotzky, 2012), so using only maternal report may not provide an accurate reflection of infants’ behaviors and their effect on parents. Moreover, previous research (e.g., Halpern et al, 1994) has emphasized the need for objective measures of sleep and temperament in studies exploring the relation between these variables, in order to counteract the influence of parental factors.…”

Improving Psychosocial Health, Coping, and Self-Efficacy in Parents of Sleep-Disturbed Young Children

“…Research including data on both parents is quite rare. Nevertheless, results indicate that sleep problems in young children are associated with impaired physical health in fathers [2], an increased level of distress [14,22], and impaired marital satisfaction [21]. All in all, mothers seem to be more affected by depressive symptoms, while fathers perceive more impairments in family functioning [22].…”

‘It's Quite a Journey’: Australian Parents’ Experience of Adopting Older Children from Overseas Orphanages

“…The challenge of adapting to the parenting role is ongoing, with individual factors of parents and children influencing perceived stress levels and coping. In general, parents whose child has sleeping, feeding or other problems experience higher levels of stress (Loutzenhiser & Sevigny, 2008). It could therefore be expected that Australian intercountry adoptive parents are particularly likely to experience such difficulties as two-thirds of intercountry adoptions in Australia are of children over a year old (AIHW, 2011) and international research suggests that placements of children post-infancy are more likely to be problematic due to the trauma histories of many of these children (Forbes & Dziegielewski, 2003); the increased incidence of cognitive, behavioural and medical problems (Johnson, 2004;Rutter, O'Connor, & English and Romanian Study Team., 2004); and difficulties with attachment (Farina, Leifer, & Chasnoff, 2004;Zeanah, Smyke, Carlson, & Koga, 2005).…”