Contact: Anne Mannering (annem@oslc.org) or Leslie Leve (lesliel@oslc.org) 541-485-2711
Today, Anne M. Mannering, an early-career scientist at Eugene’s Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC), publishes research findings showing a relationship between marital problems and the ability of a family’s very young children (ages 9 – 18 months) to fall asleep and stay asleep successfully. “Our findings suggest that the association between marital instability and children’s sleep problems emerges earlier in development than has been demonstrated previously,” says Mannering.
The study of 357 adoptive families, in a widespread collaboration with colleagues from OSLC, University of Leicester, Cardiff University, University of Pittsburgh, University of California at Davis, Pennsylvania State University, University of New Orleans, and Yale Child Study Center,
found that marital instability – for example, contemplating divorce – when children are 9-months old predicts sleep problems when a child is 18-months-old. The researchers were interested in the idea that family stress may have an impact on how a child develops sleep patterns. Adoptive families were chosen to rule out the possible influence of shared genes on associations between the parents’ and the children’s behavior, as previous research in this area has been with biological parent/child groups. The analysis held even as the researchers took into consideration such factors as children’s difficult temperaments, parents’ anxiety levels, and birth order. Happily, they also found that the inverse is not true — children’s sleep problems did not predict marital instability.
The results suggest that parents should be aware that marital stress may impact an infant’s well-being even in the first year or two of life. Mannering notes that, “We are now investigating whether the relationship between marital instability and child sleep problems persists after age two, and the role that the parent-child relationship might play in this association.”
These findings appear in the journal Child Development Vol. 82, Issue 4. The study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health.