The fact that babies and small children can care for sleepless nights, is probably familiar to all parents. How much sleep is affected, researchers from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom have now analyzed with data from Germany.
Thus, it takes after the birth of the first child up to six years, until mother and father can sleep again as before.
Hardener usually meets mothers, explains Sakari Lemola from the Psychological Institute of the University. „Women tend to suffer from sleep disorders more often than men after having a baby.“ This is because mothers are still more likely than fathers to be primary caregivers. In the first six months, the effects on nursing mothers are also greater. First-time parents would find it more difficult than experienced parents with more children, according to Lemola.
According to him, on average, mothers sleep one hour less than before birth in the first three months, when they reach a low point. With the fathers it is 15 minutes less. Although this improves with the age of the offspring. But even if the children are already four to six years old, according to the study women sleep 20 minutes and fathers 15 minutes less a night than before birth.
For the study of long-term effects of pregnancy and childbirth on sleep satisfaction and duration, the responses of 2541 mothers and 2118 fathers of the so-called Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from the years 2008 to 2015 were evaluated. This is a representative repeat survey commissioned by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin).
