St James-Roberts, I;
Roberts, M;
Hovish, K;
Owen, C;
(2017)
Video evidence that parenting methods predict which infants develop long night-time sleep periods by three months of age.
Primary Health Care Research & Development
, 18
(3)
pp. 212-226.
10.1017/S1463423616000451.
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Abstract
Aim To examine two hypotheses about the longitudinal relationship between night-time parenting behaviours in the first few postnatal weeks and infant night-time sleep-waking at five weeks, three months and six months of age in normal London home environments. BACKGROUND: Most western infants develop long night-time sleep periods by four months of age. However, around 20-30% of infants in many countries continue to sleep for short periods and cry out on waking in the night: the most common type of infant sleep behaviour problem. Preventive interventions may help families and improve services. There is evidence that 'limit-setting' parenting, which is common in western cultures, supports the development of settled infant night-time behaviour. However, this evidence has been challenged. The present study measures three components of limit-setting parenting (response delay, feeding interval, settling method), examines their stability, and assesses the predictive relationship between each of them and infant sleep-waking behaviours. METHODS: Longitudinal observations comparing a General-Community (n=101) group and subgroups with a Bed-Sharing (n=19) group on infra-red video, diary and questionnaire measures of parenting behaviours and infant feeding and sleep-waking at night. Findings Bed-Sharing parenting was highly infant-cued and stable. General-Community parenting involved more limit-setting, but was less stable, than Bed-Sharing parenting. One element of General-Community parenting - consistently introducing a short interval before feeding - was associated with the development of longer infant night-time feed intervals and longer day-time feeds at five weeks, compared with other General-Community and Bed-Sharing infants. Twice as many General-Community infants whose parents introduced these short intervals before feeding in the early weeks slept for long night-time periods at three months of age on both video and parent-report measures, compared with other General-Community and Bed-Sharing infants. The findings' implications for our understanding of infant sleep-waking development, parenting programmes, and for practice and research, are discussed.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Video evidence that parenting methods predict which infants develop long night-time sleep periods by three months of age |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1017/S1463423616000451 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1017/S1463423616000451 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © Cambridge University Press 2016 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Infant crying, infant sleeping, parenting |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1534407 |
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