Throughout the human evolution, human development during infancy has clearly shown the need for parental supervision. Unlike some animals which can self-sufficient themselves from an early age, a human infant cannot survive on its own once it is out in the world. They require care and supervision to an extend time until they are ready to self-sufficient on its own. From the beginning of the human existence, mothers and infants shared a close physical contact, even during their sleep. The mother would provide warmth, nutrition, and protection to the infant for their essential survival. Thus, the practice is referred to as, co-sleeping (Thoman, 2006).
However, during the recent society where promoting independence to children …show more content…
As the cause of SIDS is to be unknown, there were many types of research that focused on the relationship between co-sleeping and the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). While the old research findings were that bed sharing was associated with increased risk for SIDS, some authors proposed that bed sharing might be potentially protective against SIDS (Kelmanson, 2006). The debate on whether co-sleeping prevents the risk of SIDS has been argued for a long time. However, some researchers have found out that co-sleeping does lower the chance of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. James J. McKeena found out that countries that practice co-sleeping as a normative sleeping pattern between infant and parents had lower rates of SIDS than the countries that do not (McKeena, 1996). Moreover, high bed sharing associated with high breast feeding rates associated with relatively low SIDS amongst non-smoking mothers is found also in Japan, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand (McKenna & McDade, …show more content…
However, there are several reports illustrating the negative effects impacting parents. In a recent research, it has been reported that there is a positive association between co-sleeping and depressive symptoms to parents. For example, bed-sharing mothers had more despair and anxiety in a sample from Barbados, and greater depressive symptoms in Australia, Ireland and in the United States. However, the study stated that the relationship between depression and bed-sharing might be dependent on the ethnicity (Mileva-Seitz, Bakermans-Kranenburg, Battaini & Luijk, 2016). Western countries tend to show more results of depression and mood-swings whereas Asian countries showed less chance of depression as co-sleeping is a normative practice. However, we cannot conclude that there is a positive relationship between mood and co-sleeping as further researches should be