In addition, Freudian psychology privileged the marriage bed and claimed that babies would be harmed if they were exposed to parents’ sexuality. Over time, other Western trends converged with that decree: Rising affluence and the value on independence and individualism made separate bedrooms fashionable. So the church ordered that babies should sleep in a separate cradle until the age of three. Historical records from northern Europe show that Catholic priests heard confessions from destitute women who had “overlain” onto their newborns, suffocating them in a desperate attempt to limit their family size-they just couldn’t support another child. But all of them slept within sensory range of their babies.Ībout 500 years ago, Western societies diverged from the rest of the world regarding family sleep, McKenna explains. The particular arrangements varied-some parents slept nestled with their babies on the same bed, mat, or rug others placed their babies in a hammock or basket within arms’ reach still others placed them in a “sidecar” arrangement next to the adult bed. How did sleep become so controversial?įrom the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.įor most of human history, McKenna writes, parents slept close to their babies for their safety and protection, as well as for parents’ own ease of breastfeeding and sleeping. “Separately,” say the pediatricians, while McKenna and his colleagues say, “Together, but safely.” McKenna’s easy-to-read book offers important insights about how cosleeping can be made safe and what kind of benefits it might promote for children’s development and parents’ well-being. McKenna’s conclusions, supported by research from other anthropologists and developmental scientists over the last 30 years, have thrown him into direct conflict with the American Academy of Pediatrics over recommendations about where babies should sleep. He has devoted his career to understanding what happens to babies and their caregivers when they sleep together versus apart. McKenna is director emeritus of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, and author of Safe Infant Sleep: Expert Answers to Your Cosleeping Questions. McKenna, in many of his 150 scientific articles on children’s sleep. But our beliefs and decisions about children’s sleep are more a reflection of the culture we live in than the scientific evidence for what’s best for children, says anthropologist James J.

Newborn sleep expert