Here's How Much Less Sleep Women Get Once They Have Kids

But the same does not apply to men as fathers continue to sleep like babies, no matter how many children they have, according to the study.

Furthermore it was found that a mother's chance of having an interrupted sleep went up by 50 per cent for every child she had.

When it comes to losing sleep after becoming a parent, new research shows mums are getting a raw deal compared to dads.

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For their study, Sullivan and colleagues analyzed data from a telephone survey of 5,805 men and women aged 45 and under from across the United States.

New research authored by Georgia Southern University's Kelly Sullivan, PhD, found that while women who were living with kids got significantly less sleep than women who weren't, men's sleep wasn't affected by whether or not kids were in the house.

"Getting enough sleep is a key component of overall health and can impact the heart, mind and weight", Sullivan said in a press release.

As part of the telephone survey, participants were asked how many hours they slept each night, how often they felt exhausted, and how many children they had in their household.

Another finding in the research highlighted the difference between mothers and women without children when it came to feeling exhausted; mums reported feeling exhausted 14 days per month, compared to 11 days a month for non mothers.

Among the almost 3,000 women who were 45 or younger, the only factor linked with insufficient sleep was having kids in the house.

Compared with women who did not have children in their household, the team found that women who did have children were 14 percent less likely to report getting at least 7 hours of sleep each night.

Perhaps not surprisingly, gender differences were observed among households with children. In addition, the people reported how many days in the previous month they felt unrested.

Even before having children, "men in general may be getting less sleep than women", said Jodi Mindell, associate director of the Sleep Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The researchers did not find education, exercise or marital status impacting the duration of the women's sleep. And that can only happen when a person takes into account why she or he isn't sleeping, and makes a plan to overcome that.

Children had no effect on how long men slept, said the researchers whose findings were presented at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in Boston.



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