At nighttime children habitually obtained few hours of sleep with diurnal sleep fluctuations likely being "a need" and "a chance." Interventions might emphasize on creating optimal opportunities to sleep.
Objective
As the COVID-19 pandemic brings widespread changes in families, the sociology of sleep becomes noticeable. Yet, the socio-contextual determinants of a biopsychosocial phenomenon as sleep are poorly investigated. We examine changes concomitantly occurring in the child's sleep per familial and community stressors.
Methods
During the pre-COVID-19 outbreak period, in 24 minority children (5.4±1.7 years old, 54.2% girls), sleep was objectively measured 24-hours for two consecutive weeks, and this was repeated three times over the study period of three months. The caregiver filled out questionnaires surveying sociodemographic, community and family aspects.
Results
Children went to bed at 22:26 and woke up at 07:04, with each a variability of about 50 minutes. Money and time were revealed as related key stressors to sleep. Five dimensions best fitted their association. In general, concurrent changes within the individual child indicate that mean sleep variables seem to relate to predominantly features of the stressors (explained variance of 34.7% to 56.7%), while variability of sleep tends to associate to situational aspects of the stressors (explained variance of 30.4% to 61.8%). Associations were best explained in terms of the 24-hour dimension, particularly exposing sleep variability.
Conclusion
Individual variabilities in a child's sleep are associated with familial resources, such as caregiver's time to self, money and basic needs. Time spent in bed, a modifiable factor by society and shaper of sleep quantity and quality, plays a key role in stressor-sleep associations. Insights from biopsychosocial perspectives may be valuable for understanding COVID-19 sleep studies, and the development of (post-)COVID-19 sleep recommendations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.