Sleep and Development

Abstract

Sleep deprivation, poor sleep quality, and erratic sleep schedules are highly common among children and youth. Although sleep is a fundamental biological process that affects the health and well-being of persons of all ages, it is also a social phenomenon. There has been a recent surge in research paradigms that document important relations between family processes, the socio-cultural milieu, and multiple facets of children's sleep and adaptation. These novel discoveries bridge important gaps in research across various disciplines and are the focus of this volume. Contributors have come to the topic of sleep from diverse academic disciplines and areas of inquiry that relate to sleep, culture, and families including anthropology, pediatrics, nursing, human development and family studies, education, developmental psychology, developmental psychopathology, epidemiology, and clinical interventions. Bringing them together to contribute to this volume has been accomplished in the context of a belief that integration of knowledge and approaches across disciplines is fundamental for a vigorous comprehensive science of sleep as it relates to the individual's multi-faceted development and adaptation. In various sections of this book, chapters address: current state of knowledge, and various linkages between sleep, family processes, and development; sleep from an anthropological perspective and in a societal and cultural context; important methodological issues pertaining to the assessment of sleep, family functioning, and the ecology of economic disadvantage with an eye towards bridging important gaps in research methodology used by disparate scientific groups; and family based interventions for sleep problems of children.