Abstract

Bedsharing (sharing a bed with others during sleep) in early childhood (3–5 years old) is common across Western and non-Western societies alike. Though prior work indicates that bedsharing may relate to impairments in child sleep quantity or quality, the majority of studies conducted in young children are limited to parent-child bedsharing and rely almost exclusively on caregiver reports to measure child sleep. Here, the authors endeavored to gain further insights into the diversity of bedsharing practices among children in the United States, including how different bedsharing partners (caregivers, siblings) might impact actigraphy-derived measures of children’s sleep. Using a sample of 631 children ages 2:9 to 5:11 years, we found that over 36% of children bedshared in some form overnight, with approximately 22% bedsharing habitually. In a subset of children for whom actigraphy measures were collected (n = 337), children who bedshared habitually (n = 80) had significantly shorter overnight sleep, later sleep and wake times, and longer naps than solitary sleepers (n = 257), even when controlling for socioeconomic status. Despite supplementing their shorter overnight sleep with longer naps, habitually bedsharing children had significantly shorter 24-hr sleep time than did solitary sleepers, though differences in sleep efficiency were nonsignificant for all sleep periods. Additionally, sleep efficiency, onset latency, and duration did not differ between children who habitually bedshared with siblings versus those who habitually bedshared with parents. The present results add to prior work examining family contextual correlates of sleep differences in early childhood and provide a more objective account of relations between bedsharing and child sleep.

摘要

儿童早期（3-5 岁）的床共享（在睡眠期间与他人共用一张床）在西方和非西方社会中都很常见。尽管先前的研究表明，同床睡可能与儿童睡眠数量或质量的损害有关，但大多数针对幼儿的研究仅限于亲子同床睡，并且几乎完全依赖照料者的报告来衡量儿童睡眠。在这里，作者努力进一步了解美国儿童睡床实践的多样性，包括不同的睡床合作伙伴（看护人、兄弟姐妹）如何影响由活动记录法得出的儿童睡眠测量。使用 631 名 2:9 至 5:11 岁儿童的样本，我们发现超过 36% 的儿童以某种形式过夜同床，大约 22% 的儿童习惯性同床。n  = 337)，与单独睡觉的儿童 (n = 80) 相比，习惯性同床的儿童 ( n  = 80) 的夜间睡眠时间显着缩短、睡眠和醒来时间更晚、午睡时间更长 ( n = 257），即使在控制社会经济地位的情况下。尽管用更长的小睡来补充他们较短的夜间睡眠，但习惯性与床共享的儿童的 24 小时睡眠时间明显短于单独睡眠的儿童，尽管在所有睡眠期间睡眠效率的差异并不显着。此外，习惯与兄弟姐妹同床的儿童与习惯与父母同床的儿童的睡眠效率、发病潜伏期和持续时间没有差异。目前的结果增加了先前研究儿童早期睡眠差异的家庭背景相关性的工作，并提供了一个更客观的关于睡床与儿童睡眠之间关系的描述。