Parental Mental Health, Fathers’ Involvement and Bedtime Resistance in Infants

Abstract

BackgroundAround the age of 6 months, difficulties in settling to sleep and frequent night awakenings are generally occurring in 20 to 30% of infants. According to the transactional model parental factors can play a significant role in influencing infant sleep development. The purpose of the current study was to explore the combined effect of infants’ factors (temperament and sleep onset problems), and parental factors (parental mental health in terms of post-partum affective disorders, consistent bedtime routines and fathers’ involvement at bedtime), on infant bedtime difficulties (e.g. fussing, crying or protesting), including both maternal and paternal perspectives.MethodsSixty Italian intact two-parent families of infants (34 boys and 26 girls) ageing from 8 to 12 months (M = 10.73, SD = 2.54) were enrolled in the study. The parents filled out self-report questionnaires to measure the aforementioned variables. To investigate which infant and parental factors predicted infants’ bedtime difficulties, two multiple linear regressions (MR), one for fathers and one for mothers, and relative weight analyses (RWA) were conducted.ResultsWith regard to infants’ bedtime difficulties reported by fathers (R2 = .35) they were explained by infant involvement in constant bedtime routines (β = −.35, p = .030) and paternal involvement at bedtime (β = −.45, p = .007). Instead infants’ bedtime difficulties reported by mothers (R2 = .32) were explained by minutes the child taken to fall asleep (β = .24, p = .04), infant involvement in constant bedtime routines (β = −.31, p = .01) and bedtime paternal involvement (β = −.27, p = .05).ConclusionsThe main results of this study emphasized the protective role of consistent bedtime routines and bedtime paternal involvement in reducing infants’ bedtime difficulties perceived both from mothers and fathers. Future research could help to raise awareness and improve understanding of the familial influences on children’s sleep, providing recommendations for educating families, school professionals, healthcare providers, and the general public on risk and protective factors that could play a meaningful role in infants and children’s developing sleep patterns.

Predictive Factors of Toddlers’ Sleep and Parental Stress

“…Our results partially confirmed the third hypothesis (H3), showing maternal stress to be a risk factor for increasing night awakenings. However, we confirmed the fourth hypothesis (H4), highlighting paternal involvement in children's bedtime care as a protective factor for sleep quality [24,33]. Our data confirm the results of previous studies showing associations between higher levels of maternal stress and bedtime difficulties, less favorable child sleep profiles, and challenging bedtime routines [15,16].…”

“…Fathers who reported higher marital satisfaction and social support, and lower levels of parenting stress [2], seem to be more involved in caring for their children at bedtime. Paternal involvement and their provision of reliable emotional support to the child [19] positively improve both children's and mothers' sleep consolidation [23,24].…”

Parental perceived child sleep problems: A concept analysis

“…Family lifestyle and environmental factors encompass family routine, lifestyle, life events, and bedroom environment. Family routine (i.e., late and irregular bedtime) (Chen et al, 2014; Ragni et al, 2019), certain lifestyle (i.e., coffee and soft drink consumption, physical activity before bedtime, lack of daytime activity) (Chen et al, 2014), life events (i.e., newborn siblings, maternal absence, parental job change, etc.) (Kataria et al, 1987), bedroom environment (i.e., light, noise, temperature, bed clothes, etc.)…”

Paternal adverse childhood experiences: Associations with infant DNA methylation

“…These transgenerationally similar environments, therefore, could be similarly contributing to concordant associations in DNAm without any biological inheritance necessary (Krippner & Deirdre, 2019; Nilsson et al., 2019; Otterdijk & Michels, 2016). Additionally, there may also be interacting effects of both biology and environment working in concert to produce the intergenerational effects of trauma, such as differences in sleep patterns or childhood behavioral problems, observed in the literature (Collishaw et al., 2007; Folger et al., 2018; Lomanowska et al., 2017; Martin et al., 2007; Nikolas et al., 2015; Ragni et al., 2019; Schwerdtfeger et al., 2013).…”