If you chat with enough people about your decision to cosleep, you’re bound to come across a person who believes that cosleeping results in dependent and anxious children. Not only is this a common belief that people have, but if you do a quick Google search, you will come across articles and publications that claim that cosleeping is linked to anxiety, decreased independence, poor behavioral outcomes and more. So, is this true, and should we be concerned that cosleeping with our children will lead to these undesired consequences?
The research is mixed
It is really important to understand that empirical science as a means to study human history, behaviors, and outcomes is very limited, and there are many associated issues. Humans are incredibly complex and cannot be reduced to a set of singular variables, which is how we are studied.
For this reason, you can find a study to support almost any claim! It’s important to look at the funding sources, outcomes that are being measured and how they are being measured, and potential confounding variables (for humans, there are many).
You can find some research that seems to draw a link between anxiety and cosleeping, like this one, or this one. We could stop at this research and call the search off with no critical thinking. We could claim that cosleeping definitely causes anxiety! Or we could keep digging and find research like this which finds that bedsharing in early childhood increases cognitive competency, or this one which found that early cosleepers were more self-reliant and exhibited more social independence. McKenna and McDade (2005), summarize more positive findings from cosleeping research here, including a large study of 1400 college students which found that “there were more positive adult outcomes for individuals who coslept as a child, among almost all ethnic groups [in Chicago]… an especially robust finding was that co-sleepers exhibited a feeling of satisfaction with life.”
Limitations of the research
I think it’s always important to remember that when human studies find correlation, that is not evidence of causation. Finding that children who cosleep seem to have higher incidences of anxiety does not mean that cosleeping caused the anxiety. In fact, it makes total sense to consider another option: perhaps, parents are more likely to cosleep with their children who have specific temperaments and personalities that make them more prone to anxiety.
Likewise, when thinking about cosleeping in terms of a child’s independence or dependence, it’s often that parents are reactively bedsharing or cosleeping with their children to meet their needs, and that child’s needs are often really just based on their temperament. Here is where we really need to look at how outcomes are being measured as well, because the outcome measures being used are often not very appropriate or valid for the populations they are studying (but that’s a topic for another day). So, which makes more sense: that a parent responding to their child’s needs and desires for closeness and comfort causes anxiety or dependence, or that a child who may present as more likely to be anxious or dependent needs to cosleep with a parent, and that the family’s increased cosleeping patterns is a direct result of the child’s unique temperament and needs? (Read this blog post for more on temperament.)
Another glaring issue with this kind of research is the pesky inconvenience of those potential confounding variables. In a research study, a confounding variable is an unmeasured variable that affects the measured variables and can impact the results of the study. When we see a study that shows a link between early cosleeping and anxiety, we have to remember that there could be (and probably are) multiple other variables that aren’t being isolated and measured that could be impacting the findings. For example, do cosleeping parents tend to parent differently than non-cosleeping parents? Do parents who cosleep tend to address emotions and behaviors differently than parents who do not cosleep? These are good questions, and could impact behavioral and mental health outcomes.
Beyond just looking at bedsharing research, it is important to ask what the totality of research we have available to us about child development and attachment says. And does this singular research study align with, or go against a large and established body of research?
This large body of research indicates to us that children are meant to depend on us deeply at a young age, and they increasingly develop more and more independence over time, but that this doesn’t happen overnight. We also know that children are designed for co-regulation and learn through relationship; they are not meant for self-regulation and independence. Research tells us again and again that when children’s needs are met and they have strong attachment relationships with their parents, they feel secure, safe, and have better outcomes.
I would also like to suggest to parents that they don’t need research to tell them how to parent. Yes, research can be very helpful in allowing us to learn more about the world, but it is not the only source of knowledge and wisdom. Your intuition, lived experience, and common sense are also valuable sources of knowledge. Does it seem logical that keeping your child at a distance, even if they are asking to be held close, would result in better outcomes or make them better adjusted somehow? Does is make sense that responding to your child’s needs would cause them to grow up with anxiety?
Why are we even asking these questions?
Seriously! Why are we even having this discussion or debate about whether cosleeping is good or bad for a child’s development and mental health? It’s very western-centric. Never in history has cosleeping been such a hot topic of debate. For most of history and in most cultures, cosleeping has just been the norm. It’s something that people do, not because they believe it’s best for a child’s development, but because it’s intuitive, common sense, practical, safe, and often necessary. It just doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense that these are the questions we are asking.
Our ancestors were communal sleepers
Communal sleeping, for most of history, has been a common and necessary practice. Back in the day, most families didn’t have large enough houses or huts for every person to have their own room and bed. Not only that, but the isolated nuclear family unit is a very new phenomenon. For most of history, extended family has all lived together and slept together.
In the days of cavemen, people were sleeping on nests of leaves and other plants, and they were all piling together at night to stay warm and safe. During the middle ages, families typically slept in one bed to stay warm (their guests and travelers also shared a mattress with them). In her article, The Once Common Practice of Communal Sleeping, Adee Braun points out that even in the 15th century when beds began to look more like they do now, they were very expensive, and thus only the rich could afford more than one. Fun fact: Interestingly enough, before the invention of electricity, humans were biphasic sleepers, which means they slept for a few hours (know as “first sleep), and then woke to socialize, work, or pray, and then returned back to sleep for a few hours (known as morning sleep). You can read more about this biphasic sleep pattern in this article.
Per Braun, it was actually the Victorians who began the shift away from communal shifting. She writes,
“the Victorian home abounded with rooms and was bisected into the realms of servants and masters. This marked a shift toward privacy that had been slowly taking place over the past two centuries. Individual bedrooms were assigned to each family member, and gradually the idea that communal sleeping was improper and downright immoral took hold and trickled down to the lower classes.”
In fact, these separate sleep spaces extended to married couples as well, and the primary reason was to keep disease at bay. Twin beds for married couples was the norm for awhile until eventually later in the 1900s when twin beds for married couples was thought to be prudish and old-fashioned (make sure you check out my blog post on how sleeping separately from your partner may actually be a good option for your family.)
So what’s the point of all this history? The debate that is being had about whether cosleeping with your children somehow harms their development, independence, or mental health doesn’t even make sense in the context of human history. Parents have been raising well adjusted, independent children without mental health issues for centuries prior to the movement away from communal sleeping. These concerns were never even a thought for families who only knew communal sleeping and had no other options. In many cultures and locations around the world, it is still normal and common for communal sleeping to occur. The debate itself of whether cosleeping is okay or not is inherently western-centric and narrow-minded. It is interesting to note that it seems that our current generation of young adults are the ones most struggling with mental health and independence, yet cosleeping has not been the norm for many years.
It is biologically normal to live in community and sleep next to our children. We cannot harm our children by responding to their needs. With that being said, if our child desires their own place to sleep, and we have the space in our home to provide that for them, that is also responding to their needs. I believe some folks who are vocal about their disagreement with bedsharing think that most bedsharing parents are forcing their children to bedshare with them until they are teenagers, even if the child doesn’t want that. This does not represent the situation for the vast majority of bedsharing families.
If you are in need of more sleep support, grab one of my comprehensive eCourses, such as The Infant Sleep Foundations eCourse or the Toddler Sleep Foundations eCourse. If you’d prefer 1:1 support, you can book a call or support package. If you really just need to help with safely bedsharing, my friend Tiffany, has some amazing bedsharing FAQ guides that I highly recommend! This information I wish I had access to years ago when I first started bedsharing. Grab the FAQ bundle here, and save $5 with the code taylorkulik.
