Separating the effects of ethnicity and socio-economic status on sleep practices of 6- to 7-month-old infants

Abstract

Infant sleep undergoes significant re-organization throughout the first 12 months of life, with sleep quality having significant consequences for infant learning and cognitive development. While there has been great interest in the neural basis and developmental trajectories of infant sleep in general, relatively little is known about individual differences in infant sleep and the socio-economic and cultural sources of that variability. We investigated this using questionnaire sleep data in a large, unique multi-ethnic sample of 6–7 month-olds (n = 174), with families from South Asian ethnic groups in the UK (Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) being especially well represented. Consistent with previous data from less variable samples, no effects of SES on sleep latency or nocturnal sleep duration emerged. However, perinatal risk factors and ethnic differences did predict daytime sleep, sleep fragmentation and sleep-onset time. While these results should be interpreted with caution due to several limitations, they likely demonstrate that even when socio-economic status and ethnicity are much less confounded than in previous studies, they have a surprisingly limited impact on individual differences in sleep patterns in young infants

Ethnic variation in unexplained deaths in infancy, including sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), England and Wales 2006–2012: national birth cohort study using routine data

“… 26 Unfortunately, direct evidence on relevant infant care practices is very limited: for example, a comparison of 20 Afro-Caribbean with 33 White British babies in East London found that the Afro-Caribbean babies were more likely to share the parental bed and to ‘prefer’ front sleeping, but numbers were very small, the participating parents were volunteers and more than one preferred sleep position could be reported, with no indication of frequency. 27 …”

What Is “Normal” Infant Sleep? Why We Still Do Not Know

“…In Canada, First Nation mothers are more likely to cosleep than White mothers (Bartick & Tomori, 2019). Similarly, in the United Kingdom, Pakistani and Bangladeshi families of any SES were much more likely to cosleep than White British families (Ball, 2012; Gantley et al., 1993; Tomalski et al., 2016), and in the Netherlands, Carribean mothers were more likely to cosleep than Dutch mothers (Luijk et al., 2013). In Thailand, minority Christian and Muslim mothers were more likely than Buddhist mothers to cosleep (Anuntaseree et al., 2008), and in New Zealand, Maori mothers have high rates of cosleeping (Bartick & Tomori, 2019; Rigda et al., 2000).…”