Parental social capital and children's sleep disturbances

Sleep plays a critical role in the health and well-being of children. Individual and household factors, including parent's social connections, may impact children's sleep. Our study assessed the association between children's sleep disturbances and parent's social capital in a sample of Canadian households.

Cross-sectional, observational study.

Data came from 339 children and their parents who completed a telephone and follow-up survey in 2013 as part of the Canada Brain-to-Society study. Participants were parents (73.1% female) with children aged 6 to 12years residing in Montreal, Canada.

Parental social capital was assessed using a position generator, and children's sleep disturbances were measured with the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire. Other household demographic and socioeconomic characteristics were measured, including parental and child age and sex, foreign-born status, and income. Linear regression was used to examine the association between parental social capital and children's sleep disturbances while controlling for possible confounders.

Parental social capital was negatively associated with children's sleep disturbances (β=-0.02, SE=0.01, P<.05), when controlling for demographic factors (sex of parent, household income, foreign-born status, parent's age, sex and age of child, suggesting that children of parents with higher social capital had fewer sleep disturbances.

Parents with higher social capital tended to have children with few total sleep disturbances than did parents with lower social capital. Parental social capital may be a potentially modifiable aspect of the home environment that has implications for children's health.