Predictive Factors of Toddlers’ Sleep and Parental Stress

Simona De Stasio, Francesca Boldrini, Benedetta Ragni and Simonetta Gentile
Additional contact information
Simona De Stasio: Department of Human Studies, LUMSA University, 00193 Rome, Italy
Francesca Boldrini: Department of Human Studies, LUMSA University, 00193 Rome, Italy
Benedetta Ragni: Department of Human Studies, LUMSA University, 00193 Rome, Italy
Simonetta Gentile: Unit of Clinical Psychology, Department of Neuroscience and Neurorehabilitation, Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, 00165 Rome, Italy

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 7, 1-10

Abstract: Background: Although most infants consolidate their sleep habits during the first year of life, for many children, sleep is described as disrupted during toddlerhood. Along with individual child variables such as temperamental characteristics, parenting behaviors play a key role in determining children’s sleep–wake patterns. The aims of the current study were to evaluate the relationship among toddlers’ sleep quality, emotion regulation, bedtime routines, parental bedtime involvement, parental perceived social support and stress, and to integrate a novel combination of the aforementioned dimensions into predictive models of toddlers’ sleep quality and parental stress. Methods: One hundred and sixty parents with 2–3-year-old children filled out the following self-report questionnaires: the Parent–Child Sleep Interaction Scale; the Emotion Regulation Checklist; the Social Provisions Scale; and an ad-hoc questionnaire to assess parental involvement in everyday and bedtime care for children. Three multiple regression analyses were conducted by regressing maternal and paternal parenting stress and infant’s quality sleep onto the independent variables described above. Results: Toddlers’ emotion regulation and parental psychosocial functioning were related to parental stress. Toddlers’ night awakenings and the time required by toddlers to fall asleep were related to parental distress. Conclusions: The findings evidenced the bidirectional associations among the studied variables, highlighting the protective role of social support in reducing parenting stress and of paternal bedtime involvement in improving toddlers’ sleep quality.

Keywords: sleep; toddlers; parental psychosocial functioning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/7/2494/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/7/2494/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:7:p:2494-:d:341874

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().