Jan. 13, 2003 -- Taking a baby to bed with the parents is becom
Jan. 13, 2003 -- Taking a baby to bed with the parents is becoming an increasingly common practice among American families. A new survey shows that 45% of infants spent at least some time at night on an adult bed, and the number of infants who regularly share an adult bed has more than doubled from 1993 to 2000.
Although bed sharing between infants and family members is common in many cultures, researchers say little is known about how the practice may affect the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or other potential dangers.
Some studies have suggested that a child may face a higher risk of falls, suffocation, or becoming trapped when sleeping in an adult bed. But advocates of bed sharing say it provides important benefits such as encouraging longer and more frequent breastfeeding.
To determine how prevalent this practice is in the U.S., researchers conducted yearly surveys from 1993-2000. They gathered information from telephone interviews of caregivers of 8,453 infants born within seven before the interview.
They found that between 1993 and 2000, the percentage of infants who usually share an adult bed at night rose from 5.5% to 12.8%, and black infants were four times as likely to share a bed as white infants.
The results appear in the January issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
"Bed sharing appears to be growing in popularity, but a lot remains unknown about the practice," said Duane Alexander, MD, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which funded the study, in a news release. "These studies provide valuable information that will enable organizations to tailor messages about safe sleeping practices to those who need them most."
Researchers found the following factors seem to increase the likelihood of bed sharing:
- Mothers who are under age 18 were almost 2 1/2 times more likely to share a bed with their baby.
- Mothers who say they are black, Asian or "other" were more than 2 1/2 times as likely to share a bed.
- Parents with household incomes of less than $20,000 were 1 1/2 times more likely to share a bed with their children.
- Parents who lived in the South were more than 1 1/2 times as likely to co-sleep than parents who lived in the Midwest.
- Parents of infants less than 8 weeks old were slightly more than 1 1/2 times more likely to share a bed.
A related study in the same journal produced similar results after studying bed sharing among a low-income inner city area. It showed that almost half of the mothers in this group said their baby regularly slept with a parent or other adult during the infant's first year of life.
SOURCE: Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, January 2003 ? News release, American Medical Association.
