www.webchild.com.au June 2010 19

featurestory

The Rituals Of Rest

Rozanna Lilley considers the sleeping practices of families around the world.

Every new parent struggles with the issue of how best to put their baby to sleep. Some are staunch advocates

of a separate crib or cot in Mum and Dad’s bedroom, while others are firm believers in controlled-crying techniques and a separate bedroom as providing a solid foundation for later good sleep habits. An increasing number of parents in Australia share their bed with their babies or infants. Some are prompted to do so by exhaustion; others by the convenience of breastfeeding in bed and the joys of newfound intimacy.

Although sleep and sleep problems loom large in the lives of new parents, few pause to consider how sleep practices vary around the world, or the central social and cultural ideas that are expressed through the ways in which sleep is organised, talked about and argued over. In most societies, babies and children sleep in close proximity to their mothers. But in other cultures, infants are expected to sleep on their own through the night, preferably without parental assistance.

In Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Northern Europe, people take for granted that we should try to sleep for one long period at night. We believe that our children should do their best to make it through the night without us. Each evening, the rituals of solitary childhood sleep are enacted in homes throughout our suburbs and neighbourhoods. Children are put to bed dressed in special clothes, known as pyjamas, and offered bedtime stories and security objects, such as teddies and dolls. Sometimes there is a night-light to ward off fears of the encroaching dark. This bedtime routine, experts tell us, provides a gradual lessening of stimulation, coupled with reassurances of safety.

This ritualised isolation and solitude imposed on young children is not practised in most of the world. Indeed, in many

Illustrations by Andrea

Smith

Children are put to bed dressed in special clothes, known as pyjamas, and offered bedtime stories and security objects, such as teddies and dolls. Sometimes there is a night-light to ward off fears of the encroaching

dark. This bedtime routine, experts tell us, provides a gradual lessening of stimulation, coupled with reassurances of safety.

cultures, our bedtime rituals would be perceived as a form of child neglect. For the vast majority of non-Western cultures, infants and young children sleep with their parents, usually their mother. This is known as ‘co-sleeping’, with bed-sharing being one variant of this pattern.

Co-sleeping is generally associated with cultures that place a high value on interrelatedness and interdependence, while solitary sleeping is often encouraged in societies that emphasise autonomy and independence.

In Japan, for example, children often co-sleep with other family members until they are teenagers. Children and parents sleep on futons with their edges almost touching. Children sleep between their parents to symbolise their position as a river between two banks, as intimately connected

to their mother and father as flowing water is to the earth it has carved away.

In Italy, children are encouraged to participate in the family’s late evening activities and, often, to fall asleep in the company of adults. Italian children frequently sleep in the same bed or room as their parents, with some commentators suggesting this pattern is associated with a powerful emphasis on family solidarity.

In Papua New Guinea, co-sleeping is the norm. Neil Maclean, a social anthropologist at the University of Sydney, told me: “I’m not aware that anyone puts kids to bed. Kids go to sleep when they feel like it.” People fear sorcery attacks, especially at night. Sleeping together, often on wooden platforms, provides both company and some sense of safety.

In Australia’s Aboriginal community, there is also a marked cultural preference for co-sleeping. Yasmine Musharbash, also of the University of Sydney, has been taking research trips to Central Australia for more than a decade. She comments: “People always sleep in the company of other people. You sleep in a row of swags or beds or mattresses.” These rows, known as yuntas, are organised to protect the vulnerable, with competent senior adults sleeping at the ends to watch over

the more vulnerable, including young children and the frail elderly.

In marked contrast to the examples above, standard expert advice in Australia recommends that infants and young children should fall asleep alone at bedtime and should stay asleep during the night. A number of commentators have argued that this pattern is related to our cultural ideals of emotional control, self-reliance and independence. Until quite recently, it was common for advice books, paediatricians, psychologists and nurses to dismiss parent–child co-sleeping as poor parenting, with detrimental side effects for children and parents alike.

These ideas have been radically questioned by evolutionary anthropologist James McKenna. He points out that the human infant is the most neurologically

immature mammal at birth, with an astonishing 75 per cent of brain growth occurring after birth. We are biologically designed to rely on external regulation and support, especially in the first year of life. That need for intensive prolonged care is most commonly provided by mothers. In particular, McKenna ignited debate with his argument that mother-and-infant co-sleeping not only provides the best context for sustained breastfeeding, but may also play a potentially protective role in helping to resist some forms of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

According to this view, the synchronised nocturnal movements of mother and infant result in a different pattern of sleep, characterised by increased arousals, more breastfeeding, increased heart rate and less deep sleep. Babies may benefit, McKenna hypothesises, from the external metronome of parental breathing. When sleeping together, mothers and babies are physiologically entwined, resulting in more frequent shifts between

different sleep levels from which it is easier to arouse. This is, he suggests, actually beneficial to babies.

In Australia, the SIDS and Kids Safe Sleeping campaign (www.sidsandkids.org) points to a number of dangers in co-sleeping, especially bed-sharing, and recommends that babies sleep in a cot next to their parents’ bed for the first six to 12 months of life. Especially among urban economically marginalised minority groups, bed-sharing has been associated with high numbers of infant deaths. In communities characterised by urban poverty, multiple independent risk factors for SIDS tend to converge, including maternal smoking, drug taking or alcohol consumption, and sleeping on soft surfaces such as sofas or pillows that may contribute to suffocation. As

McKenna and colleagues argue, however, there is no evidence to suggest that bed-sharing between babies and non-smoking breastfeeding mothers increases the risks of infant mortality.

If we take an historical view, we find that co-sleeping was the norm in Anglo-American societies before the 19th Century. Signs of change began to develop in the 1880s, with parents being instructed to instil strength and self-sufficiency in their children through the encouragement of solitary sleep habits.

The notion of set schedules for children’s sleep was increasingly popularised in the 1930s. Parents were told that modern child training required orderly schedules. Even a half-hour variation, they were warned, might result in restlessness, an inability to concentrate at school, surreptitious reading in bed and, worst of all, masturbation. The popularity of bottle-feeding in the 1950s reinforced the idea that solitary sleeping in infants and children was normal. Today, this belief in the moral value of uninterrupted solitary infant and child sleep remains almost sacred.

Despite these pressures to conform to expert advice advocating solitary infant and child sleep, as any new parent will tell you, babies rarely conform to expected patterns of behaviour.

Understanding the cultural and historical factors that influence debates about co-sleeping, as well as being informed about the potential risks and benefits of bedding down with babies, may help parents to make informed choices. We need to move away from one-size-fits-all recommendations about child sleeping arrangements, and recognise the potential validity of a variety of sleeping practices and beliefs. Broader cultural values and different family orientations and experiences interact to influence sleeping arrangements in all societies. As long as parents are provided with information on how to practise that choice safely, co-sleeping can be beneficial to all, often extending the duration of breastfeeding and enhancing the bonds of intimate connections between parent and child. n

Rozanna Lilley is a social anthropologist based at the Children and Families Research Centre at Macquarie University.