Nature vs Nurture in Sleep

(Above: an illustrator's depiction of an American man arguing with a Chinese man.)

Have you heard of the “nature versus nurture” argument?  Probably.  The science says that most of ‘us’ (our personality and overall health predispositions) is controlled by nature, i.e. genetics, and that a smaller portion is influenced by nurture: the environment we live in, our friends, family, income, education, etc.  While it is true that a lot of our health predispositions are controlled by genetics, we have the power to control our wellness.  One of the areas where “nurture” has a lot, maybe almost all, control of our wellness is sleep health.

According to “Sleep Medicine” by Mindell et. al., one’s culture plays a large role in bedtime, waketime, sleep quality, efficiency, etc.  To study the correlation between culture and sleep, parents/ caregivers from primarily “Western” homes (i.e. Australia, USA, United Kingdom, etc.) and parents from primarily “Eastern” (think Japan, Malaysia, China, etc.) answered an infant-sleep questionnaire online.  The questionarre included questions about bedtime routine, sleeping arrangements, infant daytime and nighttime sleep patterns, and sleep-related behaviors.

The article notes that this study was the only cross-cultural study of its kind to examine the effects of culture on infant and toddler sleep.  The large and varied sample size of this study allows it to be used for powerful analyses of the considered phenomena.

Most intriguing, the researchers found that total sleep time varied across cultures by about 101 minutes!  Bedtime routines were also found to be unique and more disassociated than I would imagine (children in traditionally Eastern countries like China receiving less sleep than American children, for example).  Children in Eastern countries are more likely to bed share but less likely to have a strictly enforced nighttime daily routine.  I also note that parents in Eastern countries tend to report more sleep problems than Western parents (51.9% versus 26.3%).

These findings surprise me while simultaneously managing to not surprise me at all.  I have visited China, Beijing to be exact – the bustling capital of the nation, mind you – and stayed with a host family whose daughter was probably sleep-deprived because of the rigorous academic environment she has been raised in.  *Side note: I visited my senior year of high school, 4 years ago, and get to see her this winter!*  I am not surprised by the differences found in that these populations have very fast-paced societies like ours but I also feel that to a certain degree, most nations in the “East” value health more and would therefore work to address it.

Lastly, I have been sleeping well the last few nights, and I am grateful to feel rested!

This week, I commented on Sahar Bradham's and Matt Sutton's blogs.