Parents’ Sleep Across Weekdays and Weekends: The Influence of Work,Housework,and Childcare Time

Abstract

Children increase time demands with important consequences for sleep. Here, we test whether parents’ paid and unpaid time demands and the presence of young children equally reduce mothers’ and fathers’ sleep, comparing the married/cohabiting to unmarried. Applying data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS, 2003–2016), we find married/cohabiting mothers report less sleep when young children or multiple children are present; they are employed; their spouses are employed; and they spend more time in housework and childcare. By contrast, unmarried mothers report less sleep when children are present because of their larger domestic loads. For married/cohabiting fathers, the presence of multiple children is associated with less sleep but doing more housework results in more sleep. Finally, unmarried fathers’ employment time explains the association of children on their sleep. Parents report a sleep deficit relative to the childless but the reasons vary by gender and the co-presence of a partner.

Keywords

sleep gender work housework social interaction gender display

Scientific and medical literature has long documented that good sleep is critical for good health (Luyster et al., 2012). An emerging sociological literature argues that sleep is gendered, with women more vulnerable to family disrupting sleep than men (Plage et al., 2016; Maume et al., 2018). This is particularly true in traditional nuclear families (i.e., one man parent married to one woman parent), in which gender norms often structure mothers’ and fathers’ time in employment, time spent caring for children, and time spent in housework (Bulanda, 2004; Maume, 2006; Ruppanner & Maume, 2016). Parents’ sleep may be disrupted by practical family and work obligations—since time is a finite resource, parents may sacrifice sleep to accomplish their heavier load of daily tasks—or psychological impositions like the lingering of the mental load into the night (Burgard & Ailshire, 2009). For example, prior research has suggested that fathers are often kept awake worrying about their paid work, while mothers often stay awake worrying about their children (Maume et al., 2010, 2018). This suggests that time spent sleeping is “socially patterned” (Hislop & Arber, 2003a)—as much as their waking activities, sleep time is structured by men and women’s social and familial roles, relationships, and obligations, which, in turn, are structured by gender (Burgard & Ailshire, 2013; Lallukka et al., 2010).

This article examines how children, work, and family responsibilities impact the amount of sleeping time of mothers and fathers, paying particular attention to differences between the married/cohabiting and unmarried. We extend prior research by assessing how children of different ages affect sleep and whether these relationships are explained by the number of children in the family, parents’ employment, and/or parents’ domestic demands. Mothers typically shoulder a greater responsibility for housework and childcare regardless of their employment status which may mean they lose sleep due to cumulative employment, childcare, and domestic demands (Chesley & Flood, 2017; Gough & Killewald, 2011; Horne et al., 2017; Killewald & Gough, 2010). On the other hand, fathers’ sleep may be more tied to employment given fathers’ greater investment in employment once children are present (Jacobs & Gerson, 2016). Existing research on sleep shows married mothers prioritize fathers’ sleep to ensure fathers can “be their best” for the next day’s work (Maume et al., 2009). In this regard, couples enact gender roles even during their sleep time. This begs the question: Are the same gendered patterns in sleep evident for unmarried/not cohabiting parents? The absence of a spouse or partner may lead mothers to report longer sleep, due to one fewer family member to care for overnight. Indeed, existing research lends preliminary support for this notion—couples report worse sleep than those who are single, and women in heterosexual couples tend to lose more sleep than their men partner (Hislop & Arber, 2003b; Meadows et al., 2005). Alternatively, unmarried parents, especially mothers, may report less sleep than the married because there is no one to share the daily domestic burden. Our models explicitly test for gender differences in sleep patterns for the married/cohabiting and unmarried. This allows us to weigh whether time availability and gender display affect sleep differently for parents within heterosexual marital or cohabiting unions compared to those without a partner present.

To further clarify these arguments, we assess how children’s age structures parents’ sleep to identify whether sleep ultimately “returns to baseline” as their children age. Richter et al. (2011) found that following a sharp decline in sleep satisfaction and duration in the first months postpartum, neither mothers’ nor fathers’ sleep fully recovers to pre-pregnancy levels up to 6 years after the birth of their first child. Given what we already know about the gendered nature of sleep, our study seeks to further explore whether these experiences are more pronounced by gender and marital/cohabiting status. After documenting these relationships, we then assess whether the additive pressure of multiple children, employment, and domestic allocations are associated with sleep. We test whether parents’ sleep is more structured by time-based demands—which capture time availability—or by gendered social roles—which underpins gender display. If time availability best explains parents’ sleeping patterns, we would expect mothers and fathers to be equally burdened by cumulative work and family demands —young children, more children, full-time employment, and greater domestic loads. If gender roles are influential, we might expect fathers to sleep longer than mothers under similar circumstances—when they are employed and have young children, and particularly when they spend more time in housework. The latter hypothesis builds on a body of literature showing parents’—particularly mothers’—struggle to balance competing time and emotional demands from their families and their jobs, leading to adverse physical and mental health outcomes (Borgmann et al., 2019; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; Lamar et al., 2019). For mothers, traditional gender role expectations mean sleep occurs “on the job” as the home is a site of production (i.e., housework, childcare, and mental load) but we expect the co-presence of a husband will exacerbate these demands. This extends upon a robust literature on domestic work showing heterosexual unions amplify gendered allocations of time use as a means to “do gender” (Berk, 1985; Brines, 1994; Ferree & Hall, 1990; Goffman, 1959, 1979; Ridgeway, 2011; Risman, 1998). Here, we assess how spouses, children, employment, and domestic demands structure sleep to identify whether sleep forms another dimension of parents’ lives that is socially patterned.

Our analysis uses data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) which measure time in sleep, housework, and childcare over a single 24-h period for a large nationally representative sample of individuals. We use these data to compare participants across critical ages in children’s development—infancy, toddler, elementary school-aged, and middle/high school-aged—as children’s age is shown to structure parents’ sleep (Bruck, 2006; Iglowsten et al., 2003; Price et al., 2014; Scher et al., 2004). We then test whether these associations are the consequence of parents’ balancing other demands—to multiple children, to employment, and to housework and childcare—and whether these experiences are amplified when a spouse or partner is present. This allows us to address three key research questions: (1) do parents sleep less than those without children even when children are older?; (2) are these relationships explained by compounding demands, having multiple children in the home, working full-time, and spending more time in childcare and housework; and (3) do these relationships vary by gender and marital/cohabiting status? Our results build upon sociological research identifying sleep as a site of gender inequality, finding that work and family demands interact to disproportionately impact mothers’ sleep (Hislop & Arber, 2003a; Maume et al., 2010, 2018).

Children’s Developmental Stages and Parents’ Sleep

The bulk of the sleep research focuses on sleep as a physiological process. This research has identified several gendered differences in how men and women sleep. In controlled experiments, women have been found to sleep longer and to experience higher sleep quality than men (Goel et al., 2005; Krishnan & Collop, 2006; Mallampalli & Carter, 2014). Some large-scale time diary research has corroborated these findings. For example, Burgard and Ailshire (2013) found that women of all ages reported sleeping longer than men. In light of these broad trends, it is important to understand how parents’ sleep may be gendered especially when young children are present.

Children’s age is likely to influence parents’ sleep. Medina et al. (2009) find that the demands of caring for young children, in particular, lead to substantial losses in sleeping hours for parents, which in turn lead to problems with stress and declining physical health. Children’s developmental processes in their first three years mean their sleep is heavily disrupted and schedules variable (Jiang, 2019; Scher et al., 2004). This includes night-time nursing and children’s cognitive brain development that interrupt natural circadian rhythms (Jiang, 2019; Meltzer & Montgomery-Downs, 2011). Mothers of infants often report relatively long sleep hours (7.2 h per night on average) but experience fragmented and low-quality sleep (Meltzer & Montgomery-Downs, 2011). These developmental experiences attached to children’s growth may lead to parents reporting less time in sleep at particular ages. Scher et al. (2004) found that children aged 12–24 months can be expected to wake for more than 1 min at least five times a night, as well as waking 2.5 times a night for more than 5 min. Two episodes of 5 min or more are still common throughout the second and third year; however, by age 3.5 years, this has generally decreased to approximately one 5-min episode per night. These studies indicate that children’s age, especially from infancy to young childhood, plays a critical role in parents’ sleep. We expand upon this body of work to include children across a range of ages (rather than just pre-school aged) for a large representative sample of mothers and fathers. This allows us to identify whether children’s age is associated with gendered sleep patterns for a representative sample of the U.S. population. This leads to our first hypothesis:

H1. Parents of young children will report less sleep than those with older children.

Time Availability and Parents’ Sleep

Biological studies of sleep are focused on individual sleep as a means to understand health and well-being. However, sleep forms an integral dimension of our time use and thus may be governed by our current theoretical understandings. The time availability perspective theorizes time as a finite resource whereby time investments in one domain leave less time available for another. These relationships may be gender-neutral with parents who spend more time in paid and unpaid work equally likely to sacrifice sleep. Barnes et al. (2012, p. 810) find, that for both mothers and fathers, a 1-h increase of time spent either at work or with family is associated with a decrease of between 6 and 14 min in time spent sleeping. They argue that these amounts to “stealing” from sleep time in order to fulfill their everyday tasks, and that full-time employed parents are particularly vulnerable to lost sleep (Barnes et al., 2012, p. 812). Thus, sacrificing sleep may be a means whereby parents meet the daily demands of families and work.

From this body of work, we would expect more time in employment, housework, and childcare to detract from time in sleep. Applying a time availability perspective, we expect parents who sleep less to spend more time in housework, childcare, and/or employment than those who sleep for longer. Further, we expect the association of young children to less sleep to be explained by parents’ greater demands across these three domains and gender-neutral. Thus, we apply a time availability perspective to develop the following hypotheses:

H2. Parents with greater housework, childcare, and/or employment demands will report less time in sleep.

Applying a Gendered-Frame to Sleep: Time as Gendered and Gender Display

Gender Roles and Sleep Time

Absent from theories of time availability is the way gender structures work and family time demands. Sleep time is explicitly linked to gendered allocations of time use. For example, more time in paid work has been found to decrease sleep time and quality (Burgard & Ailshire, 2009), and because fathers typically spend more time in paid work, they cite work stress as their most significant impediment to good sleep (Maume et al., 2010). Mothers, by contrast, are more likely to disrupt their sleep to attend to children’s needs (Burgard & Ailshire, 2009, 2013), and cite family-related stress as a critical sleep disruptor (Hislop & Arber, 2003b; Maume et al., 2010; Venn et al., 2008). This body of research documents that mothers and fathers experience not only different practical, but also different psychological impediments to sleep, because their different gender roles as parents mean they experience different types of work- or family-related stress. This means domestic time use and employment may impinge upon sleep in gendered ways leading us to augment our next hypotheses:

H3. Mothers’ time in domestic work—childcare and housework—and the presence of multiple children will have a stronger negative association with sleep than for fathers.

H4. Fathers’ employment status will have a larger negative association with their sleep than for mothers.

Sleep as a Form of Gender Display

Grounded in a social interactionist perspective, the gender display theory posits that traditional gender roles frame men as “providers” or “breadwinners” and women as “carers” or “homemakers” (Berk, 1980; Ridgeway, 2011; West & Zimmerman, 1987). Within the home, gendered time use patterns are often understood as ways heterosexual couples “do gender” within the family (Berk, 1980, 1985; Ridgeway, 2011, Risman, 1998; South and Spitze, 1994, West & Zimmerman, 1987). Specifically, mothers generally spend more time doing domestic work, including childcare, cooking, and cleaning, than fathers (Batalova & Cohen, 2002; Becker, 1985; Fuwa, 2004; Ridgeway, 2011) with the transition into parenthood a critical point that traditionalizes unpaid domestic labor (Baxter et al., 2008). Fathers typically maintain or increase time spent in paid work upon the transition into parenthood (Gjerdingen & Bruce, 2005; Keizer et al., 2010), while mothers often reduce their working hours (Bittman et al., 2003; Boeckmann et al., 2014; Maume, 2006). Indeed, the transition into parenthood is shown to provide a unique catalyst to activate traditional gender norms (Baxter et al., 2015).

What remains unclear is whether unmarried mothers are equally impacted by employment, housework, and childcare when a husband or cohabiting partner is absent. Existing research show married mothers protect their husbands’ sleep time (Maume et al., 2010). This may make married mothers’ sleep particularly vulnerable to family demands—to young children, multiple children, their own employment, their husbands’ employment, and domestic demands—as care for family during the night-time becomes another way to “do gender.” By contrast, married men may be protected from the burdens of children and domestic loads on sleep (Venn et al., 2008). To date, there are few comparisons of married/cohabiting and unmarried/not cohabiting women’s sleep experiences, with those focusing more on the impacts of relationship satisfaction and the gendered dynamics of husbands’ and wives’ sleep rather than the direct effect of work and family demands on men and women’s sleep (see Grandner et al., 2010; Troxel et al., 2009, 2010). This begs the question, does mothers’ sleep look different in the absence of a husband or partner? Pepin et al. (2018, p. 125) found that for unmarried parents, gender display is less relevant as mothers are not negotiating expectations of heterosexual relationships, even when there are other adults present in the household. This provides critical insights into social interactionist theoretical explanations about gender display in the absence of a critical audience member—a husband or cohabiting partner (Goffman, 1959). From a social interactionist perspective, we expect unmarried fathers’ sleep to look more similar to that of unmarried mothers. This leads to our next hypothesis:

H5. Gender gaps in sleep will be smaller or non-existent for unmarried parents compared to married parents.

For unmarried parents, gender may be a less critical driver of sleep, but rather the demands of children, work, and housework may impact sleep time more acutely. In the absence of a spouse or partner to shoulder the childcare and housework demands, unmarried parents may report less sleep time than the married/cohabiting. Further, these relationships may be equivalent in magnitude for mothers and fathers, erasing gender differences across these measures. Or, unmarried parents may also enact traditional gender roles and, as a result, we may document gender differences between these groups. Mothers, regardless of marital status, may spend more time in housework at the expense of their sleep. Pepin et al. (2018) found that while unmarried mothers spend less time doing housework than married mothers, they are shown to spend equal amounts of time in childcare compared to their married counterparts and more time than single fathers which, again, may reduce sleep time (also see Hook & Chalasani, 2008). In this regard, unmarried mothers may be equally vulnerable to traditional gender role expectations that increase time in unpaid work at the expense of sleep. This leads to our hypothesis:

H6. Unmarried mothers will report less sleep time when shouldering larger domestic and employment demands than unmarried fathers.

Data and Analytical Approach

To test these hypotheses, we apply data from the 2003–2016 ATUS derived from the ATUS Extract Builder (ATUS-X) (Hofferth et al., 2018). The ATUS is a large, nationally representative sample of Americans’ daily activities over a 24-h period collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). One adult is randomly selected from those who participated in the Current Population Survey. They are interviewed on a diary day to understand how they spent their time across a 24-h period (4 am to 4 am). Pooling cross-sections across years (2003–2016) provide large sample sizes to estimate differences for theoretically driven groups—here, married/cohabiting and unmarried/not cohabiting parents’ sleep across detailed estimates of children’s ages. We restrict our sample to those of prime working age (under 65 years of age) and who are not disabled or retired. This provided an analytic sample of 137,340 respondents of whom 12,574 are unmarried parents with their own child under 18 in the home, 51,512 are married/cohabiting parents with their own child under 18 years in the home, and 73,254 respondents are non-parents, both married and unmarried. Only one measure has missing data—income—which we include as a discrete category rather than deleting or imputing this measure as it is shown to produce significantly different sleep outcomes (i.e., longer sleep).

We stratify our sample by gender and marital status to compare married/cohabiting and unmarried (never married, divorced, separated, and widowed) parents’ sleep time. We bold significant between-gender differences from a fully-interacted pooled model. We build our models step-wise to understand how number of children, employment status, and time in childcare and housework structure the relationship of age of child to parents’ sleep. This allows us to weigh whether children themselves or the employment and domestic demands associated with children impinge upon parents’ sleep, paying careful attention to gender and marital status. All of our models estimate OLS regressions and apply design weights.

Dependent Variable

Our dependent variable is total sleep time over the diary day. Respondents reported sleep time in minutes over a 24-h period. We transformed respondents’ sleep time into hours for greater ease in interpretation and capped this measure at 14 h per day to reduce the influence of outliers.

Main Independent Measures

Age and Number of Children

We utilize two main groups of independent variables to estimate how children impinge upon sleep. Age of child is measured through a series of dummy variables: (1) child under 1 present (value = 1); (2) child 1–2 years present (value = 1); (3) child 3–5 years present (value = 1); (4) child 6–12 years present (value = 1); and (5) child 13–17 years present (value = 1). Our comparative group is those without a child in the home. As a robustness check, we also restricted our sample to parents in which older children (13–17 years) serve as the comparative group (see Appendix C). In addition to age of child, we also expect the number of children to structure parents’ sleep. We collapsed the number of own children in household measure into three dummy variables—one child present in the home (value = 1), two children present in home (value = 1), and three-plus children in the home (value = 1)—to reduce the influence of outliers for the few with large family sizes. We include those with only one child in the reference group of childless respondents, as preliminary analyses showed the one-child indicator was collinear with children’s age measures. The inclusion of the number of children dummies allows us to estimate whether the presence of multiple children structures sleep beyond children’s ages. In further sensitivity tests, we estimated whether the co-presence of children across ages (e.g., interaction term = child 1 or under present × child 1–2 present) were associated with parents’ sleep. These interaction terms were largely non-significant which may be an artifact of: (1) reduced power from small cell counts; (2) the data are collected for presence but not number of children in each category underestimates those with two children in a single age category; or (3) a true non-significant association. We cannot adjudicate between these explanations and thus exclude these detailed interaction terms from the models.

Employment Status

We hypothesize that parents, especially unmarried parents, balancing work and family demands will sacrifice sleep. To estimate these theoretical links, we measure employment status dichotomously through self-reports: (1) employed full-time (value = 1); and (2) employed part-time (value = 1). The omitted category is those who were not employed for various reasons (i.e., homemakers, unemployed, students, etc.); our sample excludes the retired so they are not counted amongst the not employed. For the married, we also include spouses’ employment—spouse employed full-time (value = 1); spouse employed part-time (value = 1); and spouse not employed (omitted category—value = 0).

Domestic and Paid Time Use

We expect childcare and housework time will be particularly disruptive to parents’ sleep. Thus, we utilize two-time use measures—housework and childcare—using information from the diary day. Our measure of housework time aggregates respondents’ hours in core housework chores: (1) cooking; (2) cleaning; (3) laundry; (4) grocery shopping; and (5) washing dishes. Childcare time captures all time the respondent spends in primary care of children on the diary day, measured in hours.

Individual Controls

We include a range of control measures. Sleep research documents seasonality in sleep patterns with people sleeping longer during the winter months given fewer daylight hours (Harrison, 2013; Kohsaka et al., 1992). Thus, we compare those who filled out their time diaries in winter (comparative group) to those reporting in spring (value = 1), summer (value = 1), or fall (value = 1). We also include a measure for whether the diary day was a weekend (value = 1) or weekday (value = 0). Age is also an important predictor of sleep time. Our sample is restricted to those in their prime working age (18–65 years) but we also account for potential non-linearities in sleep by age by comparing our modal group—those aged 35–44 years—with all other age categories spanning 10-year bands: 18–24; 25–34; 45–54; and 55–64 years. Our data spans a 14-year time period, so we include a series of dichotomous measures for diary year comparing those from 2003 to all other years (dummies for years 2004–2016). We also employ a series of dichotomous measures to capture variation in education levels (college degree or higher compared to those with some college and those with a high school degree or less), income (less than $25k per year compared to all other groups) and race (non-Hispanic whites to Blacks, Latinos, multi-racial individuals, and those of any other race).

Results

Descriptive Overview of Sample

Table 1 provides the descriptive overview of our sample stratified by gender and marital status. For the married, we find significant gender differences in time in sleep, housework, childcare, and employment. Specifically, married mothers spend more time sleeping, doing housework, and in childcare than married fathers. Married respondents are equally likely to have children across all age groups with 6% having a child under 1 year in the home; 14% with a child 1–2 years; 20% with a child 3–5 years; 36% with a child 6–12 years; and 22% with a child 13–17 years. Roughly 24% of our married sample have one child in the home, 27% have 2 children and 14% have 3 or more. For these reasons, it is not surprising that married women are less attached to employment—less likely to work full-time, more likely to work part-time, and more likely to be married to a full-time working spouse.

Table 1.

Descriptive Overview of Dependent and Independent Variables (2003–2016 ATUS).

	Married/Cohabiting					Unmarried/Not Cohabiting
	Women		Men		Significant Gender Difference	Women		Men		Significant Gender Difference
	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Significant Gender Difference	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Significant Gender Difference
Time use
Sleep hours	8.637	1.908	8.367	1.988	***	8.857	2.301	8.780	2.358	***
Housework hours	2.250	2.174	0.745	1.267	***	1.525	1.900	0.758	1.288	***
Childcare hours	1.197	1.861	0.670	1.386	***	0.496	1.249	0.097	0.575	***
Age and number of children
Child under 1 present	0.067	0.250	0.065	0.247	–	0.021	0.144	0.003	0.053	***
Child 1–2 years present	0.144	0.351	0.143	0.350	–	0.052	0.222	0.008	0.090	***
Child 3–5 years present	0.207	0.405	0.206	0.404	–	0.086	0.281	0.018	0.132	***
Child 6–12 years present	0.369	0.483	0.367	0.482	–	0.199	0.399	0.052	0.221	***
Child 13–17 years present	0.224	0.417	0.226	0.418	–	0.129	0.336	0.041	0.197	***
One child present	0.240	0.427	0.237	0.425	–	0.182	0.386	0.061	0.240	***
Two children present	0.278	0.448	0.279	0.448	–	0.112	0.316	0.029	0.168	***
Three children present	0.143	0.350	0.141	0.348	–	0.057	0.231	0.008	0.088	***
Employment status
Employed full-time	0.511	0.500	0.858	0.349	***	0.600	0.490	0.671	0.470	***
Employed part-time	0.206	0.404	0.057	0.232	***	0.176	0.381	0.123	0.329	***
Spouse employed full-time	0.744	0.437	0.427	0.495	***	–	–	–	–	–
Spouse employed part-time	0.079	0.270	0.229	0.420	***	–	–	–	–	–

Note: n=137,340.

For the unmarried, all of the means significantly vary by gender. On average, unmarried women report longer sleep time, more time in housework and childcare, and are more likely to have children of all ages in the home. Amongst our unmarried mothers, 2.1% have a child under 1 year in the home; 5.2% a child 1–2 years; 8.6% a child 3–5 years; 19.9% a child 6–12 years; and 12.9% a child 13–17 years. For number of children, 18% have 1 child, 11% 2 children, and 5% 3 or more children in the home. Unmarried fathers are less common in our survey but given the large sample size of the ATUS pooled over these years, we still have adequate cases to estimate regression models. However, we are cautious about the results for fathers with children under 1 in the home, given that this cohort has relatively few participants (n = 62 in Appendix B).

Children and Sleep: Regression Results for the Married/Cohabiting

Table 2 presents the regression results for the married/cohabiting with significant gender differences from the fully interacted pooled model noted in bold. All of the models include a full set of individual controls. Models 1 and 2 show that married/cohabiting parents report less sleep than those without children across all child age ranges. Consistent with expectations, this means parents with older children still sleep less than those without children in the home (support for H1). Married/cohabiting fathers with a child in the 5 years or younger age ranges report roughly 0.13 of an hour (7.8 min) per day less in sleep. For those with school-aged children, married/cohabiting fathers report negligibly less time in sleep time relative to those without children in the home (3–4 min per night). For married/cohabiting mothers, the presence of a child under 1 year is associated with 0.40 of an hour (24 min) less in sleep per day. While the loss of sleep reduces with older children, married/cohabiting mothers report less time in sleep relative to married fathers when school-aged children are present (ages 6–12 years = −0.15 or 9 min; p < 0.001). Although these daily differences are small, aggregated over the year married mothers with children under 1-year sleep 142.3 and mothers with school-aged children 57.3 fewer hours than those without children.

Table 2.

OLS Regression Results for Sleep for Married/Cohabiting Respondents (ATUS 2003–2016).

	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women
	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7	Model 8
Constant	8.154***	8.340***	8.153***	8.339***	8.592***	8.620***	8.609***	8.838***
Presence of child by age
Child under 1 present	−0.139 ***	−0.404 ***	−0.082	−0.339 ***	−0.078	−0.397 ***	−0.029	−0.141***
Child 1–2 years present	−0.132***	−0.162***	−0.072*	−0.095***	−0.073*	−0.150***	−0.031	0.017
Child 3–5 years present	−0.133 ***	−0.085 ***	−0.058	−0.002	−0.056	−0.037	−0.033	0.052
Child 6–12 years present	−0.045 *	−0.154 ***	0.059	−0.040	0.067 *	−0.057 *	0.078**	−0.004
Child 13–17 years present	−0.074**	−0.076***	−0.009	−0.004	0.005	0.002	0.001	0.003
Number of children
Two children present	–	–	−0.125***	−0.151***	−0.125***	−0.176***	−0.114**	−0.149***
Three children present	–	–	−0.241***	−0.252***	−0.246***	−0.314***	−0.239***	−0.291***
Employment status
Employed full-time	–	–	–	–	−0.565 ***	−0.444 ***	−0.574 ***	−0.526***
Employed part-time	–	–	–	–	−0.256***	−0.285***	−0.261***	−0.340***
Spouse employed full-time	–	–	–	–	−0.072**	−0.063**	−0.074 **	−0.052 *
Spouse employed part-time	–	–	–	–	−0.095 **	0.015	−0.093 **	0.023
Time use
Housework hours	–	–	–	–	–	–	0.018 *	−0.027 ***
Childcare hours	–	–	–	–	–	–	−0.050 ***	−0.112 ***
Adjusted R²	0.109***	0.102***	0.109***	0.102***	0.116***	0.111***	0.117***	0.119***

Note: n = 73,421; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.010; ***p < 0.001; All of the models control for the full set of individual controls. Between gender differences noted in bold (p < 0.10).

Models 3 and 4 include the presence of multiple children in the home to test whether differences in the number of children impacts sleep. For married/cohabiting fathers, we find the age of child categories become non-significant with the exception of those with a child aged 1–2 years who sleep 0.07 of an hour (4 min) less per night. Married/cohabiting fathers with two children have shorter sleep by 0.12 of an hour (7 min) and those with three or more children sleep 0.24 (14 min) hours less per night than childless married men. Thus, for married fathers, the age of the child is less consequential for their sleep than having multiple children, including those with multiple young children in the home. Married mothers also report less time sleeping when two children (b = 0.15 h or 9 min) or three plus (b = 0.25 h or 15 min) are present in the home. However, the presence of children aged 2 years or under remains significant and negative for mothers’ sleep. Thus, for married mothers, children’s disruption of sleep is additive—the presence of multiple children and the presence of young children lead to less sleep (support for H3).

Models 5 and 6 introduce measures of our respondents’ and their spouses’ employment status. Those working full- or part-time report shorter sleep than those out of the labor market. Full-time work is associated with sleeping 0.56 of an hour (33 min) less for men and 0.44 of an hour (26 min) less for women, a significant gender difference (counter H4). For married/cohabiting men, having an employed spouse-full- or part-time is associated with less sleep (0.07 and 0.09 less, respectively). For married/cohabiting women, having a full-time working spouse is associated with less (−0.06 h) but a part-time working spouse more (0.01 h) time in sleep, a significant gender difference. Thus, while spouses’ employment is a drain on married/cohabiting men’s sleep, having a part-time working spouse is associated with more sleep for married/cohabiting women. Again, net of employment status, we see married/cohabiting mothers sleep less when children 6–12 years (3 min); 1–2 (9 min); or under 1 (22 min) are in the home indicating the presence of children remains significant for married/cohabiting mothers’ sleep.

Models 7 and 8 are the final models that include time in housework and childcare. A dynamic pattern emerges—married/cohabiting men who spend more time in housework sleep more (0.01 h per 1 h increase in housework) but married/cohabiting women who spend more time in housework sleep less (−0.02 hours per 1 h increase in housework), a significant gender difference (support for H3). Parents who spend more time in childcare report less time sleeping but the magnitude of this association is twice the size for married/cohabiting mothers than fathers (−0.11 vs. −0.05 h per 1 h increase in childcare; support for H3). Net of these measures, the negative association for the presence of a child aged 1–2 and 6–12 years becomes non-significant but mothers with a child 1 or under continue to report less sleep but the magnitude of this association is more than half that from the previous model (−0.14 h or 8 min). Interestingly, net of childcare and housework differences, we find married/cohabiting mothers with children ages 1–5 years sleep slightly longer than fathers with children of equivalent ages. This indicates that the negative impact of children 1–5 years on married mothers’ sleep is partly a consequence of the greater time in childcare and housework and, importantly, once this time is accounted for mothers actually experience a sleep premium to fathers.

Across these models, we see that married/cohabiting women are particularly vulnerable to lost sleep—when very young children are present, when multiple children are present, when doing more housework and childcare, when employed, and when partnered with a full-time worker. Married/cohabiting men’s sleep is shorter when multiple children are present, when they work full time, when partnered with an employed spouse, and when doing more childcare. After accounting for the greater amount of time spent in housework and childcare, the presence of a child 1–2 years is no longer significantly associated with married/cohabiting fathers’ sleep but those with an elementary/middle school-aged child (6–12 years) report slightly longer sleep (4 min). Importantly, married/cohabiting men who contribute larger housework contributions report spending more time in sleep. These patterns suggest different sleep experiences for married respondents that transcend gender-neutral time availability arguments and speak to gender display. Whether these patterns are similar for unmarried respondents is explored in more detail below.

Children and Sleep: Regression Results for the Unmarried

Table 3 presents the results for our unmarried sample. All of the models include sociodemographic controls and significant gender results from the fully interacted model are presented in bold. Models 1 and 2, consistent with the results for married/cohabiting mothers, show that the presence of children across a range of ages is negatively associated with unmarried mothers’ sleep. For unmarried fathers, only the presence of a teenager (13–17 years) is associated with less sleep. None of these coefficients, however, are significantly different by gender lending support to our hypothesis that unmarried mothers and fathers are equally vulnerable to lost sleep (H5). The magnitude of these coefficients is largely equivalent across children’s age categories (7–10 min). Thus, unmarried parents do not appear to gain sleep when older children are present nor exhibit significant differences by gender.

Table 3.

OLS Regression Results for Sleep for Unmarried/Not Cohabiting Respondents (ATUS 2003–2016).

	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women
	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7	Model 8
Constant	8.156***	8.301***	8.155***	8.287***	8.696***	8.782***	8.688***	8.873***
Presence of child by age
Child under 1 present	−0.475	−0.148*	−0.455	−0.088	−0.406	−0.153	−0.268	0.168
Child 1–2 years present	−0.040	−0.171**	−0.016	−0.109	0.052	−0.132*	0.180	0.087
Child 3–5 years present	−0.142	−0.121**	−0.113	−0.046	−0.104	−0.046	0.010	0.096
Child 6–12 years present	−0.142	−0.073*	−0.103	0.010	−0.079	0.018	−0.003	0.125**
Child 13–17 years present	−0.196*	−0.138***	−0.171	−0.078	−0.142	−0.066	−0.117	−0.030
Number of children
Two children present	–	–	−0.088	−0.088	−0.109	−0.110	−0.087	−0.084
Three children present	–	–	−0.084	−0.300***	−0.095	−0.354***	−0.092	−0.344***
Employment status
Employed full-time	–	–	–	–	−0.789***	−0.690***	−0.793***	−0.740***
Employed part-time	–	–	–	–	−0.327***	−0.447 ***	−0.329***	−0.478 ***
Time use
Housework hours	–	–	–	–	–	–	0.019	−0.011
Childcare hours	–	–	–	–	–	–	−0.133***	−0.155***
Adjusted R²	0.073***	0.094***	0.073***	0.094***	0.088***	0.106***	0.089***	0.111***

Note: n = 63,960; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.010; ***p < 0.001; All of the models control for the full-set of individual controls. Between gender differences noted in bold (p < 0.10).

Models 3 and 4 introduce measures for the number of children in the home. Unlike for the married/cohabiting, only one measure is significant—the negative association of having three or more children at home for women (−0.30 h or 18 min). None of the age of children measures is significant and we note no significant between-gender differences. Models 5 and 6 introduce employment status which is negatively associated with unmarried men’s and women’s sleep, lending support for our arguments about time availability (H2). Unmarried men working full-time report 46 and women 41 min less in sleep per night than those out of employment. For the unmarried, part-time work is associated with less sleep for women (26 min) than men (19 min) per day in line with our gendered time availability arguments (H4). Net of employment, the presence of a 1–2-year-old child is negatively associated with unmarried mothers’ sleep (b = 0.13 or 7 min).

Models 7 and 8 introduce housework and childcare time use. With the inclusion of domestic time, the negative associations between young children and unmarried mothers’ sleep become non-significant and unmarried mothers with school-aged children (6–12 years) sleep 7 min longer than women without children and mothers of infants (under a year) sleep 10 min longer per day than equivalent fathers. This indicates that the added burden of unpaid work-housework and childcare-associated with having young and teenaged children in the home negatively impacts unmarried mothers’ sleep time. For the unmarried, housework is associated with longer sleep for men but shorter sleep for women, a pattern similar to that of the married/cohabiting. Childcare time is negatively associated with sleep for unmarried fathers and mothers that does not vary by gender. Once this time is accounted, we find unmarried mothers with school-aged and infants actually sleep longer.

Unmarried Versus Married/Cohabitors: A Comparison of Regression Results

Table 4 presents the regression results from the pooled sample to examine within-gender differences by marital/cohabiting status controlling for all covariates. We find support that gender display plays a more salient role amongst married/cohabiting than unmarried parents. Specifically, married/cohabiting mothers sleep less and unmarried mothers more when a child younger than 1 year and an elementary/middle school child (ages 6–12 years) is present in the home (support for H5). Time in housework has a larger negative association with sleep for married/cohabiting than unmarried mothers and married/cohabiting fathers report a sleep premium when they do more housework, a relationship not significant for the unmarried. For unmarried parents, time availability appears to play a more salient role. The negative association between full-time employment and childcare time with sleep is larger for the unmarried than married/cohabiting. Unmarried men and women working part-time spend less time in sleep than the married. Collectively, our results indicate divergent drivers of gender differences in parents’ sleep-time availability versus gender display-by marital status.

Table 4.

OLS Regression Results for Sleep for Married/Cohabiting and Unmarried/Not Cohabiting Respondents (ATUS 2003–2016).

	Married/Cohabiting Women	Unmarried/Not Cohabiting Women	Married/Cohabiting Men	Unmarried/Not Cohabiting Men
Constant	8.838***	8.873***	8.609***	8.688***
Presence of child by age
Child under 1 year present	−0.141***	0.168	−0.029	−0.268
Child 1–2 years present	0.017	0.087	−0.031	0.180
Child 3–5 years present	0.052	0.096	−0.033	0.010
Child 6–12 years present	−0.004	0.125 **	0.078**	−0.003
Child 13–17 years present	0.003	−0.030	0.001	−0.117
Number of children
Two children present	−0.149***	−0.084	−0.114**	−0.087
Three children present	−0.291***	−0.344***	−0.239***	−0.092
Employment status
Employed full-time	−0.526***	−0.740***	−0.574***	−0.793***
Employed part-time	−0.340***	−0.478***	−0.261***	−0.329***
Time use
Housework hours	−0.027***	−0.011	0.018*	0.019
Childcare hours	−0.112***	−0.155***	−0.050***	−0.133***

Note: n = 63,960 ; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.010; ***p < 0.001; All of the models control for the full-set of individual controls. Between gender differences noted in bold (p < 0.10).

Discussion

We investigated whether parents’ sleep is socially patterned by gender, marital/cohabitating status, and family demands. As sleep is another dimension of time use enacted within the family, we considered two theoretical approaches consistently applied to unpaid domestic work-the time availability and gender display perspectives. We compared mothers to fathers and the married/cohabiting to the unmarried/not cohabiting. Our results illuminate the utility of applying these theoretical frameworks to sleep and underscore the importance of differentiating by gender and co-presence of a partner.

Time availability is particularly useful to explain sleep time as parents with greater demands—multiple children, full- or part-time employment, or greater childcare loads-report spending less time in sleep. In the absence of a spouse/partner, unmarried parents are particularly disadvantaged from these higher loads with full-time employment and childcare time imposing a larger negative association on sleep. This suggests that parents who have to go-it-alone are sacrificing more sleep due to these demands than married/cohabiting parents. In this regard, competing time demands impose restrictions on unmarried parents’ time available to sleep.

For married/cohabiting, time availability also plays a role with multiple children, employment, and childcare reducing time available for sleep. However, gender plays a more critical role for married/cohabiting mothers. Married/cohabiting mothers report spending less time in sleep when they have babies, multiple children, full-time jobs, part-time jobs, spouses with full-time jobs and greater housework, and childcare demands. For married/cohabiting fathers, sleep is associated with having two or more children in the home and balancing their and their spouses’ employment. The age of the children present in the home is not associated with sleep but rather having two or more children reduces married/cohabiting fathers’ sleep. Married/cohabiting fathers also report a sleep premium, but mothers a sleep penalty, when they spend more time in housework. Clearly, living in a marital union extends sleep benefits to men that are not evident for married/cohabiting women underscoring the power of gender norms in structuring sleep. Our results are consistent with previous research showing wives buffer husbands’ sleep from disruption (Maume et al., 2009). Here, we show they also sleep longer.

The magnitude of some of the associations is small, fewer than 10 min per day. Others are larger, at around an hour less in sleep. Although it is tempting to dismiss the effects that are small in magnitude, it is important to contextualize these daily differences across years and the cumulative effect of sleeping less due to the presence of multiple children and holding a full-time job. Further, sleep is intimately linked to good physical and mental health and long-term sleep deprivation can have serious health consequences. Small reductions in sleep can accumulate over time to affect people’s health and wellbeing (Billiard, 2003).

There are several notable limitations to the study. Time-use data are effective in demonstrating sleep patterns across a representative sample of parents within the United States. Our research does not, however, fully address why women’s sleep is so badly affected by their time in paid and unpaid work. Mothers have been shown to carry a larger mental load than fathers (Daminger, 2019) which may explain why time in childcare has gendered consequences on parents’ sleep. Mothers who spend more time in childcare may worry more about children during the night which reduces sleep time (Venn et al., 2008). Indeed, mothers of older children are more likely to have sleep disrupted by worry and waiting up until children return home (Hislop & Alder, 2003; Maume et al., 2010). Identifying how the mental load impacts sleep is beyond the scope of time use data but is an important direction for future research. Our results indicate that married/cohabiting men sleep longer than married/cohabiting women and unmarried men and women, suggesting that marriage-and the gender roles it typically imposes—reduces men’s mental load and role strain, both of which have been shown by prior research to reduce sleep.

Ultimately, our results are clear-gender plays a crucial role in explaining parents’ sleep patterns and married/cohabiting and unmarried mothers are particularly disadvantaged in sleep time but from different mechanisms. Married/cohabiting mothers have the added pressure of managing husbands’ careers and children. Unmarried mothers are carrying housework and domestic burdens that drain their sleep time. Married/cohabiting fathers are stretched when multiple children are in the home and unmarried fathers when working full- or part-time. Collectively, these results indicate that parents are carrying unique strains that impinge upon their sleep. Understanding these strains and placing sleep as central to discussions of health and wellness is essential to redressing these challenges and supporting the health and well-being of parents.

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix C.

OLS Regression Results for Sleep for Parents (ATUS 2003–2016).

	Married/Cohabiting		Unmarried/Not Cohabiting
	Fathers	Mothers	Fathers	Mothers
	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Constant	8.543 ***	8.792 ***	8.971 ***	8.826 ***
Presence of child by age
Child 13–17 present (comparative group)
Child under 1 year present	−0.012	−0.153***	−0.078	0.137
Child 1–2 years present	−0.014	0.006	0.343	0.063
Child 3–5 years present	−0.022	0.043	0.140	0.087
Child 6–12 years present	0.088 **	−0.023	0.133	0.122*
Number of children
Two children present	−0.118***	−0.156***	−0.153	−0.096
Three children present	−0.251***	−0.286***	−0.179	−0.343***
Employment status
Employed full-time	−0.540***	−0.526***	−0.780***	−0.746***
Employed part-time	−0.220**	−0.318***	−0.302	−0.418***
Spouse employed full-time	−0.106 ***	−0.039	—	—
Spouse employed part-time	−0.116 ***	0.055	—	—
Time use
Housework hours	0.016	−0.032 ***	−0.037	−0.016
Childcare hours	−0.049 ***	−0.112 ***	−0.124 ***	−0.165***
Adjusted R²	0.122***	0.131***	0.115***	0.112***

Note: n = 64,086; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.010; ***p < 0.001; All of the models control for the full-set of individual controls. Between gender differences noted in bold (p < 0.10).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Tthe Australian Research Council (DP 180101217).

ORCID iD

Leah Ruppanner

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