Kids mean less shuteye for mom, while dad slumbers on
This will come as no surprise to mothers, but a new survey finds that women with children living at home are more likely to be sleep-deprived than women without children.
However, the presence of children in the home did nothing to alter mens sleep patterns.
The researchers also found that women with children reported feeling tired more days a month than their child-free counterparts. Forty-eight percent of women with children reported at least seven hours of sleep, compared to 62 percent of women without children, said study leader Kelly Sullivan.
Shes an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health at Georgia Southern University. Sullivan and her colleagues analyzed data from a nationwide telephone survey of more than 5,800 men and women. The respondents reported how long they slept each night, with seven to nine hours considered optimal and less than six hours considered lacking. The men and women also reported how many days they had felt tired in the past month.
Women with young children at home said they were tired 14 days a month, compared to 11 days for those without children in the home, the findings showed. Among the nearly 3,000 women who were 45 or younger, the only factor linked with insufficient sleep was having kids in the house. Each child in the house increased the odds of insufficient sleep by 50 percent, Sullivan said.
For men, we did basically the same analysis and children had absolutely no impact on men [and their sleep], she added. Because only limited information was available from the survey, Sullivan cant say why this is so. Nor can she say whether the ages of the children were linked with sleep duration, as no age information was available on the kids. It is well known that women who are breast-feeding are likely to be sleep-deprived after getting up for night feedings, she added.
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