Poster #146 - Sleep insufficiency, maternal parenting, and infant-mother attachment security during infant’s first year

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Attachment theory posits that parenting quality is a central determinant of infant attachment security (Weinfield et al., 2008). Although parenting quality is multiply determined (Belsky, 1984), conspicuously absent from this discussion has been the role of parental sleep quality in a parent’s capacity to be sensitive and emotionally available. In a recent study (Bai et al., 2018), later maternal bedtimes and shorter, more variable sleep durations predicted lower levels of emotional availability at infant bedtimes. This is likely due to the debilitating impact of sleep insufficiency on cognitive and emotional functioning (Banks & Dinges, 2007), which would be expected to impact a parent’s capacity to respond sensitively to infant signals. The present study extends this work by examining relations between maternal sleep sufficiency, bedtime parenting quality, and infant-mother attachment at 12 months. It was hypothesized that if insufficient sleep predicted less secure infant-mother attachment, it would do so via the quality of mothers’ bedtime parenting.

Data from 129 families were drawn from an NICHD-funded study focusing on parenting, sleep, and infant development. At 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12 months, maternal sleep duration was assessed using AW-64 actiwatches (Philips/Respironics, Inc.) and averaged across seven days. Sufficient vs. insufficient maternal sleep across the infants’ first year was based on National Sleep Foundation (NSF) recommendations that adequate sleep for young-to-middle-age adults is equivalent to 7-to-9 hours of sleep a night (Hirshkowitz et al., 2015). Using NSF guidelines, mothers were divided into two sleep groups: a sufficient sleep group (mothers averaged at least 7 hours per night at each time point, N = 105) and an insufficient sleep group (mothers averaged less than 7 hours per night at one or more time points, N = 24). Maternal emotional availability (EA) during infant bedtime was videotaped during one evening at each age point and coded using the Emotional Availability Scales (Biringen et al., 1998). Mothers’ EA scores were quite stable, and a mean EA score across the year was used in analyses. At 12 months, infant attachment security was scored by trained observers in the home using the Attachment Q-Set (AQS; Waters et al., 1995). EA and AQS observers were “blind” to other data and were trained to high reliability.

To test the mediating role of maternal EA in relations between sleep group and attachment security, direct and indirect effects were computed using the bootstrapping procedure recommended by Preacher and Hayes and provided via the PROCESS macro in SPSS (Hayes, 2013). As shown in Figure 1, mothers with insufficient sleep had lower EA at bedtime, which predicted less secure attachment, compared with mothers with sufficient sleep. The indirect effect of sleep group on attachment through maternal EA was significant (b = -0.04, SE = 0.02, 95% CI = [-0.088, -0.005]), while the direct effect was not.

These findings indicate that insufficient maternal sleep places infants at risk for insecure attachment via its impact on quality of mothering, and that a focus on getting sufficient sleep is warranted in the design of parenting intervention programs.

Authors

• Liu Bai, Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Brian Crosby, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Douglas Teti, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author