Bedsharing in Early Childhood: Frequency, Partner Characteristics, and Relations to Sleep

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.

Keywords: Bedsharing; co-sleeping; early childhood; siblings; sleep.

Figure 1.. Bedsharing frequencies and characteristics.

A) Overall prevalence of bedsharing among preschool-aged children. B) Sleep partners of habitual bed sharers. C) Sleep partners of infrequent bed sharers. D) Distribution boxplots of household socioeconomic status (SES) of different bedsharing groups, and E) Mean SES of bedsharing groups. Error bars in E) represent ±1SE. **p<.01 after SPSS Bonferroni adjustment (calculated by multiplying the original p-value by the number of comparisons made). *p<.05 after Bonferroni adjustment. +p<.05 prior to Bonferroni adjustment, but significance was reduced to >.20 after correction.

Figure 2.. Sleep duration comparisons between bedsharers and solitary sleepers.

A) Distribution boxplots of sleep durations for daytime naps, overnight sleep, and sleep across 24 hours between habitual bed sharers and solitary sleepers. B) Mean sleep durations for daytime naps, overnight sleep, and sleep across 24 hours between habitual bed sharers and solitary sleepers. Error bars in B) represent ±1SE. *p<.05 after controlling for SES.

Figure 3.. Sleep quality comparisons between bedsharers and solitary sleepers.

A) Distribution boxplots and B) simple means plots of nap and overnight % sleep efficiency (SE) between habitual bedsharers and solitary sleepers. C) Distribution boxplots and D) simple means plots of overnight sleep onset latency (SOL) between habitual bedsharers and solitary sleepers. Error bars on simple means plots represent ±1SE. +p<.10 after controlling for SES.

Figure 4.. Bedtimes and waketimes of habitual bedsharers vs. solitary sleepers.

A) Distribution boxplots of average bedtimes across actigraphy days for habitual bedsharers and solitary sleepers. B) Distribution boxplots of average waketimes across actigraphy days for habitual bedsharers and solitary sleepers. C) Dropline plot depicting the average timing of habitual bedsharers’ and solitary sleepers’ overnight sleep. Error bars in C) represent ±1SE. ***p<.001, even after controlling for SES (see supplemental material for control analyses).