Self and Others in the Family: Differentiation, Separation and Nighttime Parenting

• In Event: 3-166 - The Impact of the Family Environment on Sleep of Children and Adolescents

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Good sleep is crucial for children's optimal development hence identifying the factors that contribute to sleep quality is important. Among the factors that shape sleep patterns across the early years are parenting variables. For example, maternal separation anxiety (MSA: Hock et al., 1987) is one of the regulators of infants' sleep (Scher, 2008). In the present study, we broaden the parent-child perspective to include a Family System construct, drawn from Bowen’s theory (1979): “differentiation of self”. DoS – the ability to maintain autonomous sense of self within the family and experience both independence and intimacy has been previously identified as a correlate of parent-child relationships (Drake et al, 2015) and of child behavior (Peleg et al., 2015; Skowron, 2005). To date, there is no published data on parental DoS and child’s sleep.

Hypotheses: Our study focused on toddlers, a developmental stage suitable for studying sleep from the perspective of mother-child tie within the family as independence and separation are core challenges for both child and parent. Yet, among sleep researchers, toddlers have attracted less attention. We hypothesized that high levels of separation anxiety and low maternal differentiation of self will be associated with poor sleep.

Method & Participants: 130 mothers, and their healthy 2- to 3-year-olds, recruited in child-care facilities, completed MSA (Hock et al., 1989), DSI-R (Skowron & Schmitt, 2003), ISQ (Morell, 1999), and nighttime parenting involvement (Simon, 2017) questionnaires. Subsequently, based on the DoS scores, two subgroups of mothers (High vs. Low) were interviewed and their children’ sleep was monitored using actigraphy. The semi-structured in-depth interviews (90 min) were conducted in the homes and were subsequently analyzed using ATLAS/ti.6 software.

Results & Discussion: Mothers’ DoS was negatively correlated with MSA (r=-.24, p=.006); DoS, but not MSA, was significantly associated with sleep (F(4,125)=3.65, p=.008, ηp²=.11). Mothers’ sleep related involvement served as a mediating factor linking DoS to sleep (see Figure 1). This finding extends previous evidence on the link between parental involvement sleep habits in pointing to the significance of DoS. Importantly, the actigraphy study (n=40), corroborated the finding showing that not only parental sleep reports discriminated between the Low vs. High DoS groups, but confirmed that the sleep of children in the Low DoS was more fragmented compared to the High group (F (1,38) = 11.10, p=.01). MSA was also correlated with night-waking (r=.31, p=.05), but not with overall sleep efficiency (r=-.28, p=.08).
The qualitative analysis, comparing the narratives of the two groups revealed distinct differences in parenting styles which were associated with mothers’ past and present sleep experiences, and contributed to the intensity of involvement in the child’s sleep. Mothers’ separation distress was negatively related with fathers’ involvement. Fathers in the Low DoS group were less involved in sleep-related childcare. That mothers' MSA and DoS shaped fathers’ involvement in the sleep arena is informative in terms of co-parenting and family processes and have important intervention implications.

Conclusion: using a mixed-methods paradigm, the psychological constructs of DoS and MSA illuminated aspects of parenting dynamics in the context of child sleep.

Authors

• Tamar Simon, Department of Counseling and Human Development, University of Haifa
  Presenting Author

• Anat Scher, Department of Counseling and Human Development, University of Haifa
  Non-Presenting Author