Household Chaos Mediates the Link Between Socioeconomic Risk and Poor Child Sleep

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Family Context & Processes

Abstract

While socioeconomic risk (SER) is consistently linked to poorer child sleep (Gellis, 2011), mechanisms explaining this association are unclear. This study addressed this linkage, using two indices of SER. The first was a traditional marker index of risk (annual income), used as a central component in the bulk of studies examining SER. The second was a measure of overall family resources (liquid income, access to food, inadequate social supports), which we viewed as a more ecologically valid, process-oriented reflection of a family’s lived-experience (Dunst & Leet, 1987). Because under-resourced families typically find themselves living in higher-risk, unpredictable environments (Ackerman & Brown, 2010; Deater-Deckard et al., 2012), and because chaotic, unpredictable environments have been found to predict poor child sleep (Berger et al., 2019; Whitesell et al., 2015), the present study identified and examined household chaos as a potential mediator between SER and child sleep.

This study examines this mechanism during a pivotal time, the transition to kindergarten – when sleep duration may be particularly important for successful school entry. 230 families of children were recruited the summer before kindergarten into a study on parenting, child sleep, and school functioning. Mothers completed the Family Resources Scale-Revised (FRS-R) (VancHorn et al., 2001) during pre-kindergarten summer. The Descriptive In-Home Survey of Chaos-Observer ReporteD (DISCORD; Whitesell et al., 2015), was assessed by trained observers during the summer and early-kindergarten (September/October). Household chaos was highly stable (rs>.69, ps<.0001) and averaged. Child sleep duration during early- and mid-kindergarten were measured by actiwatches (AW Spectrum Plus, Philips/Respironics, Inc.), which the children wore on their wrists for a week. Income was measured by demographic questionnaire during summer. As sleep is multiply determined, this study controlled for one individual (maternal depressive symptoms; Beck Depression Inventory; BDI; Beck et al., 1961) and one family variable (mother-reported coparenting experience; Coparenting Relationship Scale; CRS; Feinberg et al., 2012) – both reliable predictors of child sleep.

Zero-order correlations between FRS-R and income with early- and mid-kindergarten sleep were transformed via Fisher’s r-to-z transformation (Lee & Preacher, 2013). As predicted, asymptotic 1-tail z-test (Steiger, 1980) revealed that associations between family resources and child sleep were significantly stronger than associations between household income and child sleep at early (z=1.67) and mid-kindergarten (z=2.08) (ps<.05). Mediational analyses, depicted in Figure 1, describe unstandardized indirect pathways, computed with 10,000 bootstrap estimates and 95% bias-corrected confidence intervals. A significant indirect pathway for early-kindergarten sleep supported the hypothesis that household chaos mediated FRS-R and early-kindergarten child sleep (Figure 1a) (B = 1.29, SE = .61, 95% CI [.06 , 2.49]) and between FRS-R and mid-kindergarten sleep (Figure 1B) (B = 1.63, SE = .81, 95% CI [.27 , 3.39]). All analyses controlled for the two covariates.
As expected, family resources, as a process-oriented, ecologically valid measure of SER, was a more robust predictor of child sleep than income, a marker variable, and the SER-sleep linkage was accounted for by household chaos. Discussion will center around the social ecology of socioeconomic risk and mechanisms by which socioeconomic risk impacts child and family sleep.

Authors

• Kaitlin Marie Trexberg, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• Douglas M Teti, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author