Unequal burden of childcare hampers mothers’ sleep

Mothers with more than one child feel that they have more fragmented sleep when caring for a newborn than first-time mothers, according to a recent study. For fathers, on the other hand, parental experience does not seem to substantially impact perceived sleep disturbance.

“Tension in the marital relationship may transpire if childcare is one-sided and not discussed collaboratively,” the researchers said.

A 2-week sleep diary was given to 111 participating parents (54 couples and three single mothers) caring for a 6-month-old infant. Sleep parameters such as duration, continuity, and quality were compared between sexes and parental experience levels. At the time of survey, most of the mothers were not working or studying, while majority of the fathers were. Only five mothers were not breastfeeding. [J Sleep Res 2020;doi:10.1111/jsr.13238]

Mothers reported a mean total nightly sleep of 435.20±46.54 minutes, slightly shorter than 441.30±48.37-minute nocturnal duration in fathers. On the other hand, the longest consecutive sleep was much shorter for mothers (269.34±86.90 vs 390.38±68.17 minutes), who woke up during the night more than three times as much as fathers did (1.82±1.05 vs 0.51±0.49 times).

In turn, subjective sleep quality was lower in mothers (6.45±1.61 vs 7.11±1.05).

Breastfeeding was an important correlate of sleep in mothers, significantly linked to a shorter consecutive nocturnal sleep duration and more awakenings (p<0.01 for both). Sharing the bed with the infant also worsened both sleep parameters in mothers (p<0.01 for both). In comparison, fathers who were working or enrolled as students had significantly shorter nightly sleep (p<0.01).

Comparing parents across experience levels, the researchers saw that while first-time and experienced mothers reported comparable total nightly sleep durations, the latter had significantly shorter consecutive sleep (246.01±14.79 vs 297.34±17.15 minutes; p<0.05), more awakenings (2.12±0.17 vs 1.57±0.20 times; p<0.05), and worse self-reported sleep quality (5.97±0.30 vs 7.07±0.36 points; p<0.05). Experience did not impact any sleep parameter in fathers.

Discrepancy in sleep parameters between mothers and fathers was aggravated by parental experience. For example, the difference in the number of awakenings during the night between parents was significantly greater in couples with more than vs only one child (1.75±0.18 vs 0.81±0.20; p<0.01).

A similar pattern was reported for the discrepancy between mothers and fathers in terms of consecutive sleep duration and sleep quality, but not for total nightly sleep.

“This finding suggests that experienced mothers probably take care of the older sibling or siblings, as well as the infant, during the night,” the researchers said. “Siblings in the present study were quite young, with only 10 of the 57 families having a child aged ≥6 years. Whether these results would be different in the presence of older children in the family remains to be determined.”

“Future studies could aim to explain the differences between mothers and fathers and determine why mothers with more than one child report worse sleep. In turn, interventions by healthcare providers targeting an equal distribution of daytime and night-time childcare tasks can be developed,” they added.