A Longitudinal Analysis of Father-Child Relationships and Sleep Growth Curves at Preschool Age

• In Event: 3-012 - The Role of Fathers in Child Sleep

Integrative Statement

Important developmental changes in sleep are believed to occur during the preschool period, notably an increase in sleep quality and consolidation along with a decrease in sleep duration, mostly due to a decrease in daytime sleep. However, studies that have documented these changes have generally used subjective sleep measures and were often cross-sectional. Longitudinal studies are necessary to model true patterns of developmental change and examine predictors of individual differences in these patterns. The current study investigated whether the quality of father-child relationships in toddlerhood predicted developmental trajectories of objectively assessed sleep quality, consolidation, and duration in the preschool years. We focused on three aspects of father-child interactions with documented benefits for child socio-emotional outcomes: paternal mind-mindedness (tendency to comment on the child’s presumed mental states during parent-child interactions), father-child mutually responsive orientation, and paternal involvement in child care.

128 children wore an actigraph monitor (Mini-Mitter® Actiwatch, Respironics; AW-64) for 3 consecutive days at 2, 3, and 4 years of age. Actigraphy data were used to derive average sleep duration, consolidation (percentage of total sleep taking place at night), and efficiency (an index of sleep quality) over the 3-day period at each age. These data were then submitted to growth curve analysis in Mplus using a multilevel modeling framework. For 60 of these children, we assessed quality of father-child relationships: paternal mind-mindedness and father-child mutually responsive orientation were assessed based on a 10-minute free-play sequence at 18 months, subsequently rated with standard coding schemes (Kochanska et al., 2005; Meins et al., 2001). Paternal involvement was self-reported by fathers at 2 years (Paquette et al., 2000).

The results revealed that, as expected, sleep duration decreased between ages 2 and 4, while sleep consolidation and efficiency increased. With respect to paternal predictors, neither involvement nor mutually responsive orientation was predictive of the intercept or slope in any sleep parameter. In contrast, paternal mind-mindedness was predictive of several aspects of sleep development: after controlling for child sex and family socio-economic status, higher mind-mindedness predicted a higher age-2 intercept for sleep consolidation ( = .36, p = .010) and a lower age-2 intercept for both total ( = -.30, p = .030) and daytime sleep duration ( = -.35, p = .013). This suggests that children whose fathers are more mind-minded show more mature sleep patterns at age 2: they sleep less, especially during the day, and their sleep is more consolidated. In addition, higher paternal mind-mindedness was related to a slower decline in both total ( = -.33, p = .019) and daytime sleep duration ( = -.29, p = .043) between ages 2 and 4, likely because children were more advanced developmentally at age 2 and thus their sleep patterns changed less between ages 2 and 4, having already reached relatively mature stages. Overall, the results suggest that the paternal tendency to consider and comment on children’s inner states may be a meaningful aspect of paternal behavior with long-lasting contributions to child psychobiological development, for instance through the promotion of self-regulation.
 

Authors

• Annie Bernier, University of Montreal
  Presenting Author

• Émilie Tétreault, University of Montreal
  Non-Presenting Author

• Catherine Cimon-Paquet, University of Montreal
  Non-Presenting Author

• Célia Matte-Gagné, Laval University
  Non-Presenting Author