Baby bedtimes are closer to parent bedtimes in cultures of the global majority

In many countries around the world, babies don’t go to sleep in the evening until quite close to parents’ bedtime. Or everyone goes to bed together at the same time!

In Western societies, the baby often spends evenings alone with two exhausted parents, or one exhausted parent, perhaps with some older children in the house too. One parent may be trying to prepare a meal, while another tries to keep the baby entertained or meet the childrens' varying homework and bath-time needs. Both may be watching the clock and desperately hoping for early bedtimes! Wanting to put baby to bed early in the evenings is a normal response to exhaustion. Parents long for quiet time, for time alone, for time together.

Baby and toddler bedtimes can vary by almost three hours, depending on the country you live in and your cultural background. In advanced economies, health authorities tend to consider late bedtimes for babies and toddlers a bad thing, but this is a specific cultural approach which doesn't work for most families actually, and which accidentally causes a great deal of sleep distress amongst families with babies and toddlers in the West.

In most human cultures, evenings are a time when families and friends get together over a meal. This communal social enjoyment means that the babies and toddlers are surrounded by rich sensory motor nourishment, even inside the house after sunset. There might be other children playing and making a rucus, doting adults paying attention and interacting with the baby, lots to watch and listen to. This keeps babies dialled down through the evenings until their sleep pressure is very high and sleep comes easily with a breastfeed, feed – or the baby simply drops off to sleep in the midst of everything.

Life and sleep is usually easiest and most relaxed when you know how to work with your baby’s body clock, so that her bedtime is closer to your own.

Putting baby to bed too early might cause excessive night waking a few weeks later

The problem with an early bedtime is that after a few weeks it might result in excessive night waking. This is because babies often need a lot less sleep than we think. If you are accidentally asking your baby to be in a sleep situation for longer than she needs, for example by an early bedtime, her body clock settings might gradually become disrupted. After a period of time, your baby may

Begin to wake excessively at nights
Begin to groan and grunt and stretch (even with her eyes closed) from the early hours of the morning, when it's still dark, so that you have trouble sleeping
Start the day unmanageably early.

You can learn how to reset your baby's body clock and bring her bedtime in better alignment with your own here. The importance of sensory motor nourishment for your baby in the evening is discussed here.

Of course, if everything is going well for you and your baby with sleep, then there's no need to change anything at all!

Selected references

Dias CC, Figueriedo B, Rocha M, Field T. Reference values and changes in infant sleep-wake behaviour during the first 12 months of life: a systematic review. Journal of Sleep Research. 2018:doi:10.111/jsr.12654.

Matricciani LA, Olds TS, Blunden SL, Rigney G, Williams MT. Never enough sleep: a brief history of sleep recommendations for children. Pediatrics. 2012;129:548.

Mindell J, Sadeh A, Wiegand BH, T, Daniel YG. Cross-cultural differences in infant and toddler sleep. Sleep Medicine. 2010;11(3):274-280.

Price A, Brown JE, Bittman M, Wake M, Quach J, Hiscock H. Children's sleep patterns from 0-9 years: Australian population longitudinal study. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 2014;99:119-125.

Santos IS, Eschevarria P, Tovo-Rodrigues L. Are nocturnal awakenings at age 1 predictive of sleep duration and efficiency at age 6: results from two birth cohorts. Sleep Medicine. 2024:100105.