Bed-Sharing essay

The Significance of Co-Sleeping

The directive from my boss to report households where the kids share a room or even a bed with the parents is something I would unquestionably abide with. This is so that my supervisor may create a successful campaign to encourage kids to sleep in their own rooms from an early age using the report’s findings, which accurately reflect the reality of the situation. It is significant to note that humans have always slept close to one another and their children throughout evolution, and this tendency can be related to the fact that it makes people feel safe. Past ethnographers and anthropologists of today describe co-sleeping as being seen nearly regularly among native, hunter gatherer groups. Currently, most cultures in modern and developed countries still practice co-sleeping for various reasons including improved attachment between mothers and their children, lack of enough room, and stress reduction among others. Therefore, I will investigate whether the families I interact with practice co-sleeping or not so as to get the right statistics to share with the boss. Also, the investigation of these families will entail identifying the various types of co-sleeping they practice because different cultures have different co-sleeping techniques. This kind of information is essential as it will enable my boss to identify the kind of approach he is going to adopt in designing the campaign for it to be more effective.

The Reality of Co-Sleeping in American Homes

Normally, an American home has a crib for the infant and, most parents often report that their child sleeps in the crib (Bonvillain 110). Yet when investigators make specific queries regarding who sleeps where, it turns out that many of the mothers sleep with their small children during most nights. Parents have a tendency of presenting themselves as having children who sleep on their own, following the norm in society where it is expected that the baby sleeps in their own room and the parents in the master bedroom, but this is not a true reflection of what is actually happening on the ground. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, approximately 68 percent of infants enjoyed sleeping with their parents at least some of the time. The CDC further reports that an estimated 26 percent of babies “always” co-slept. Combining these figures with those of babies who co-sleep “at times,” it seems that 44 percent of infants in the US aged between 2 and 9 months are sleeping with their parent in bed at any given period (Whiting 160).

Cultural Influences on Co-Sleeping

There is the need to understand the reason as to why these families share beds with their children prior to reporting them to my boss. This will help me understand why they do so and thus provide my boss with this information as well to use in developing the campaign. Co-sleeping (or lack of it) is a result of customs and cultural values. A number of studies affirm that the bed-sharing prevalence is as a consequence of cultural preference. A research carried out on 19 countries discovered a trend whereby co-sleeping in African, Asian and Latin American nations was a widely accepted practice; however, North American and European nations hardly practiced it (Mindell et al 276). This trend was mostly attributed to the respective fear of Asian, Latin American and African parents’ fear of being separated from their children, whereas the North American and European parents were afraid of the thought of lacking privacy for themselves (Berger 67).

Works Cited

Berger, Kathleen S. Invitation to the Life Span. New York: Worth Publishers, 2014. Print.

Bonvillain, Nancy. Cultural Anthropology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010. Print.

Mindell, Jodi A., et al. “Cross-cultural differences in infant and toddler sleep.” Sleep medicine

11.3 (2010): 274-280.

Whiting, John WM. “Environmental constraints on infant care practices.” Handbook of cross-

cultural human development (1981): 155-179.