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Cortica

Articles

Vol. 1 No. 2 (2022): Cortica II : Brainstorming on mental health

A reduced sleep quality in infants is associated with co-sleeping and parental stress during the COVID-19 pandemic

DOI
https://doi.org/10.26034/cortica.2022.3347
Submitted
September 13, 2022
Published
2022-09-20

Abstract

Children’s sleep patterns change and develop to reach certain stability within their development. These sleep patterns are vulnerable to biological, social, and environmental factors. Recent studies focused on two factors that modulate infants’ sleep, namely parents’ stress and co-sleeping. Likewise, contextual stressors influence the relationship between infants’ sleep and parents’ mental health. Confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic is a contextual stressor experienced worldwide. The present study investigates the effects of confinement on infants’ sleep, controlling for parents’ stress and infants’ sleeping arrangements. We recruited parents of 352 infants (aged from 0 to 36 months) to answer an online questionnaire. We used the Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaires to measure infants’ sleep, as well as the Perceived Stress Scale and the Well-Being Index for parental stress and well-being. Our results demonstrated that parental stress was negatively associated with infants’ sleep quality. Furthermore, we observed that co-sleeping infants were showing a poorer sleep quality than infants sleeping alone. We suggest increasing awareness concerning mental health, especially in parents, during stressful life events. Additionally, we recommend psychoeducation for parents about normal patterns of infants’ sleep.  

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