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Parents in many foreign countries sleep with their babies routinely, and not always because of a lack of space. In Asia and Central America, for example, parents’ concepts of nurturing make it incomprehensible to them that anyone would expect a child to sleep alone in a bed, not to mention in a room alone, This practice has been frowned upon, to put it lightly, in this country since at least the twentieth century, but it seems to become more common in recent years. One reason may be the ever increasing interest in breastfeeding. The simplest and most convenient way to nurse a baby is to lie comfortably in bed with her and fall asleep together when the feeding is over. Today even medical people who have disapproved most adamantly of parents and babies sleeping together have begun to reevaluate their convictions and some have swung around completely.
One of the main worries parents have had about sleeping with infants is that they will roll over and smother or injure their babies. That’s not all likely. First, you will have a mind set that assures your care about avoiding this, however deep your sleep. And second, your baby will surely wake up and begin to cry if you hurt her.
Some of the worries of pediatricians and psychotherapists have been that a child may become “addicted” to the sleeping with the parents, may be frightened by seeing the parents in the act of sexual intercourse, or may be overstimulated by the intimate body contact with adults. Parents who advocate the family bed say that children almost always want their own beds by the preschool years, if not before, and that they themselves have been able to move the children out easily whenever they’ve wanted to give up the practice. They ensure their sexual privacy by making love during the baby’s deepest sleep periods or by simply moving to another place in the house. And they insist that the bodily closeness and touching that sleeping together offers brings a feeling of security and comfort to a child, not harm. In addition, they say that both parents and infants sleep better in the same bed. The baby does not always fully awaken if she is not hungry, and may go back to sleep easily. And the parents can stay comfortably in bed and at rest, if not asleep, while the baby is awake.
The family bed question is obviously a very personal one that parents must settle for themselves. If they disagree about the wisdom of sleeping with their children, or if either is deprived of needed sleep because the child is present, they would be foolish to consider adopting the family bed. Some parents who are only lukewarm about having an infant sleep with them work out compromises of some sort. They may take the baby into their bed for only the first few difficult weeks, or they may carry the baby back to the crib when she has fallen asleep. Later, they may limit access to their bed to the kids on weekend mornings or to a sick or frightened child in the middle of the night.
