According to the Official Statistics of Finland, approximately 75% of the Finnish population become parents. At the same time, the grave impact of poor sleep on the health and wellbeing of an individual has been shown in numerous studies. Therefore, it is regrettable that studies have also shown that having a child deteriorates the sleep of the parent for a period of six years. During these six years the physical, psychological, and social development of the child is at its peak and the child needs a loving, constructive, and consistent adult to rely on.

The aim of this study was to examine the interactions of child and parental sleep and their impact on the parental perceptions of child sleep.

This study on healthy children living with their biological families and internationally adopted children was conducted as a part of the FinAdo 2 study, which is an on-going follow-up study examining the health and wellbeing of internationally adopted children in Finland. This collaboration allowed for examining the impact of genetic associations within sleep-related interactions. In addition to the 78 internationally adopted children, the study included 108 children living with their biological families, recruited from day-care facilities in Turku and Kaarina, Finland. The sleep of the children was examined by an actigraphy device, an activity sensor, during a period of one week. The parents answered on questions about socio-economic factors, and the sleep and well-being of the child and themselves. The recordings were repeated at approximately one year from the baseline for those willing to participate in the follow-up study.

The study revealed that poorly sleeping parents perceive the sleep of their children being worse than what sleep parameters in the child’s actigraphy recording indicate. It also found that the poor sleep experienced by the parent does not precede child sleep problems one year later. The third finding was that parents of eveningtype children, those who prefer to stay up late and wake up late in the morning, are at a higher risk of later sleep problems than parents of morning-type children, those who prefer to wake up and go to bed early. These results underline the importance of addressing poor parental sleep quality, in addition to the child’s eveningness when discovering ways to help families with sleep related problems.