Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America
Family and Cultural Influences on Sleep Development
Section snippets
Bedtime behavior and practices
Parent–child bedtime interactions have been consistently shown to be linked to children's sleep. Child and parent sleep-related behaviors in Anglo European countries consist of distinct bedtime rituals that are meant to enhance sleep. For young children, these activities, which usually take place in the child's bedroom, include putting on bed clothes or pajamas, holding a transitional object, and reading stories or singing songs, leading to a gradual diminution of external stimuli in the
Setting and sleeping arrangements
A set of physical and cultural factors define the actual conditions under which people sleep. Bedding, including covers and pillows, mattresses, box-springs, and sleep garments, vary widely across cultures.
In a comparative anthropological study, Worthman and Melby18 reported sleep conditions and patterns across a worldwide range of traditional communities; these population used to sleep on bare ground and sleeping arrangements vary daily and are highly flexible.
Sleeping on the floor is a
Sleep patterns
Several studies have suggested that social pressure, television, Internet, and late night movies compete with sleep, resulting in a rather drastic change in sleep habits and reduced sleep time in children.70, 71, 72 A cross-cultural study performed in the early 1990s of Dutch and American families with infants and young children73 showed that Dutch babies were getting more sleep on a regular schedule that included earlier bedtimes than American children of the same age. In this study Dutch
Summary
Childcare always occurs within a cultural context, and childrearing practices are shaped by parents' cultural beliefs. As stated by Weisner, “Children grow up in a wonderful and remarkable diversity of cultural communities around the world. Every cultural community provides developmental pathways for children within some ecological-cultural context.87 Cultural pathways are made for everyday routines of life, and routines are made up by cultural activities.” In this increasingly globalized
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Sleep in human and cultural evolution
2022, Foundations of Sleep HealthMeasuring sleep duration in adolescence: Comparing subjective and objective daily methods
2021, Sleep HealthCitation Excerpt :There was no evidence that these associations were moderated by demographic or mental health characteristics (see more discussion in Supplemental Material, including past studies with similar patterns of results), providing no evidence that these factors change the strength of the association between diary and actigraphic reports of sleep in adolescent samples. Although previous work has detected sex differences in agreement between diary and actigraph measures of sleep,9 Short et al’s adolescent participants represented a different age range (13–18 years) and were from an Australian sample, and sleep patterns have been shown to be influenced by environmental factors such as culture.25 Further, despite evidence from clinical adult research that depression and stress reduce the accuracy of perceived sleep,13,15 we found no evidence that the association between self-report and actigraph measurements of sleep duration is weakened by mental health characteristics.
Parent-reported sleep disorders in children with motor disabilities: a comparison with the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children's new norms
2019, Sleep MedicineCitation Excerpt :The rise in SDSC scores in the two decades between studies indicates a worsening quality of sleep in the general population of children and teenagers, possibly as a consequence of the expansion of media and technology use in children's daily habits (ie, screen time and smartphone use) and of changes in their cultural and educational backgrounds [22,23]. The present study's different geographical and demographic context could also have been a contributive factor, as there are wide variations in the parental and societal perceptions of what is considered ‘good sleep’ [2,24,25]. Indeed, the majority of the families in our general population sample were composed of at least one parent from outside Switzerland, in line with Switzerland's general population 2016 statistics [26].
Parent Perspectives on Sleep and Sleep Habits Among Young Children Living With Economic Adversity
2020, Journal of Pediatric Health CareCitation Excerpt :The parent–child relationship influences bedtimes (Kelly, Marks, & El-Sheikh, 2014), sleep routines (Sadeh et al., 2010), and sleep efficiency (Vaughn et al., 2011); mothers’ daytime sleepiness (Boergers et al., 2007), psychological distress, insomnia, and marital conflict (Caldwell & Redeker, 2015; Kelly & El-Sheikh, 2011; Kelly & El-Sheikh, 2013; Troxel, Trentacosta, Forbes, & Campbell, 2013) play a role in children's sleep. Although not often addressed in sleep interventions, cultural beliefs and rituals influence sleep habits (Giannotti & Cortesi, 2009; Jenni & O'Connor, 2005), with both possible beneficial and detrimental effects, and may provide a foundation upon which to build sleep interventions. These practices may be transmitted through family generations.