The Impact of Pubertal Development on Children’s Sleep and Family Conflict

• In Event: Pubertal Change, Deficient Sleep, and Mental Health Problems: Understanding This Slow Moving Trainwreck

Abstract

Approximately 70% of adolescents (ages 13-18) get either insufficient sleep or barely meet the required amount of sleep expected for healthy functioning (National Sleep Foundation, 2006; Wheaton et al., 2018). In fact, deficient sleep is so pervasive for this group that it could be considered an epidemic due to its adverse impact on mental and physical health (Owens, 2015; Shochat et al., 2014). Addressing children’s sleep problems in early adolescence thus represents a critical area of study.
In addition to the biological changes associated with children’s sleep during puberty (Crowley et al., 2018), research also suggests that the family environment is robustly linked to children’s sleep (Bartel et al., 2015; Peltz et al., 2019). Despite these strong associations, the impact of children’s pubertal development on family functioning rarely includes adolescent sleep as an explanatory mechanism. Accordingly, the current study examined the role of children’s pubertal development on both their sleep and their family environment.
The current study examines data from waves 2 (48.7% female; Mchild_age=10.95 years, SD=.67) and 3 (Mchild_age=12.02, SD=.67), which were collected through the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study (2021, release 4.0). A total of 5949 children had their sleep duration (i.e., total sleep time) and variability (i.e., SD across all nights) recorded at wave 3 with Fitbit watches, which were worn across an average of 13.84 nights (SD=9.9). At both waves 2 and 3, children self-reported on their pubertal development with the Pubertal Development Scale (Peterson et al., 1988) and on family conflict with the Family Environment Scale (Moos & Moos, 1987). Most participants identified as white (52.4%), with another 24.0% identifying as Hispanic/Latinx, 13.4% identifying as Black, 5.9% American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and 4.2% as multi-race. The families were economically diverse with 21.5% reporting family incomes of <$25,000 and 6.8% with incomes of >$200,000.
Analyses were conducted using Mplus (v.8.8, Muthén & Muthén, 2022). A mediation model was first tested in which residual change in pubertal development predicted residual change in family conflict via the mediating variables of children’s sleep duration and variability. Multi-group analyses were conducted to test moderation by sex. Children’s age, sex (removed during multigroup analysis), chronotype, body mass index, and family SES were included as covariates, and model fit for was excellent for all models tested. Multigroup analyses suggested that, only for girls, the indirect effect (effect=.004, p<.01) linking relative increases in pubertal development to relative increases in family conflict via shorter sleep duration was significant (2(2)=8.03, p<.05). Furthermore, the association between these changes in pubertal development and shorter sleep duration was significantly different with this association only emerging in girls (chi-square(1)=6.73, p<.05).
This study is one of the first to assess associations between children’s pubertal development, sleep, and the family environment. These results suggest that shorter sleep duration plays an integral role in the association between changes in children’s pubertal development and changes in family conflict. Given the expected changes to children’s sleep during puberty, findings from the current study highlight the importance for families to address this developmental transition.

Authors

• Jack S Peltz, SUNY Brockport
  Presenting Author

• Assaf Oshri, University of Georgia

• Leah D Doane, Arizona State University

• Jeri Sasser, Arizona State University

• Linhao Zhang, University of Georgia