Cosleeping Around The World
by James J. McKenna, Ph.D.
For the overwhelming majority of mothers and babies around the globe today,
cosleeping is an unquestioned practice. In much of southern Europe, Asia, Africa and
Central and South America, mothers and babies routinely share sleep. In many
cultures, cosleeping is the norm until children are weaned, and some continue long
after weaning. Japanese parents (or grandparents) often sleep in proximity with
their children until they are teenagers, referring to this arrangement as a river -
the mother is one bank, the father another, and the child sleeping between them is
the water. Most of the present world cultures practice forms of cosleeping and there
are very few cultures in the world for which it would ever even be thought
acceptable or desirable to have babies sleeping alone.
|Cosleeping is practiced in a variety of ways around
the world. In Latin America, the Philippines, and Vietnam, some parents sleep with
their baby in a hammock next to the bed. Others place their baby in a wicker basket
in the bed, between the two parents. In Japan, many parents sleep next to their baby
on bamboo or straw mats, or on futons. Some parents simply room-share by putting the
baby in a crib or bassinet that is kept within arm's reach of the bed. Most cultures
that routinely practice cosleeping, in any form, have very rare instances of SIDS.
SIDS occurrences are among the lowest in the world in Hong Kong, where cosleeping is
|Cosleeping is actually more common in the
U.S. than most people believe. The typical American home has a room that contains a
crib for the baby, and parents report that the baby sleeps in the crib. Yet when
researchers ask specific questions about who sleeps where, it turns out that the
majority of mothers sleep with their young children at least some of most nights.
Parents present themselves as having babies who sleep alone, following the societal
norm of the baby in the baby's room and the couple in the master bedroom, but that
is not an accurate representation of what is really happening.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta collects data that provide
information on all means of prenatal and well-baby stressors. Through this, we know
that cosleeping is not unusual for American families at all. Roughly 68% of babies
enjoyed cosleeping at least some of the time. Further analyses of the data show us
that about 26% of infants coslept "always" or "almost always."
Combining them with the babies who cosleep "sometimes," it appears that
44% of US babies from 2-9 months old are cosleeping in an adult bed at any given
||Japan, another industrialized country, not only has
one of the lowest infant mortality rates (less than 3 infants per 1000 live births
compared with around 7 for the United States), but one of the lowest SIDS rates in
the world (between .2 and .3 babies per 1000 live births compared with approximately
.5 per 1000 infants for the US). The Japan SIDS Family Organization reported that
SIDS rates continue to decline in Japan as maternal smoking approaches practically
0, and exclusive breastfeeding reaches around 70-75 % . In fact, one report shows
that as bedsharing and breastfeeding increased and as maternal smoking decreased,
SIDS rates decreased. This suggests yet again that it is not necessarily bedsharing,
but how it is practiced, that can be dangerous.
|Interestingly, it may be that Japanese
bedsharing rates do not differ all that much from those in the US, but the cultural
acceptance of cosleeping as the norm is very different. In 1998, 60% of parents said
they practiced bedsharing in Japan, only about 16% more than US parents. This means
that the practice of cosleeping does not necessarily vary a great deal from culture
to culture, but rather that the social acceptance of cosleeping is what varies.
1 Whiting, J. W. M. (1981). "Environmental constraints on infant care
practices." Handbook of Cross-Cultural Human Development. R. H. Munroe, R. L.
Munroe, and B. B. Whiting, editors. New York: Garland STPM Press.
Reprinted with permission of the author from Sleeping
With Your Baby: A Parent's Guide To Cosleeping by James J.McKenna (2007). Platypus
Dr. James J. McKenna is a Professor of Anthropology and the Director of
the Center for Behavioral Studies
of Mother-Infant Sleep, Notre Dame University.
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