Two parents sitting watching their child play in a box. Image by cottonbrostudio under Pexels license.

There never seems to be enough time to sleep nowadays, even more so for parents – and especially for mothers. This is one of the findings of new research by sociologists that examines how paid work and parenting impact health and physical activity among married or cohabitating adults. 

Patrick Krueger and his colleagues’ study analyzes patterns of sleep duration and physical activity from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), a huge and ongoing project that has data on a wide variety of health-related topics for a vast cross-section of America. They were especially interested in how women’s and men’s ability to sleep and exercise is impacted by their work and family lives.

The research revealed two main findings. The first relates to work. The researchers found that when parents worked over 40 hours, their sleep duration expectedly decreased but their physical activity stayed steady or even increased. The researchers suggest that the reason for this may be that as men and women worked full time, they made more intentional efforts to make time for physical activity to try and offset the health risks of long working and parenting. 

The second finding is that parenting children at any age group tends to decrease sleep duration, with those with children aged 2 and younger having the greatest sleep losses. However, having children doesn’t mean parents get less exercise. Parents sometimes simply shift their exercise routines to do physical activities that work well with their kids, like walking or playing with little ones, or playing sports and biking with older kids.

Among other things, this project emphasizes the importance of improving policy efforts to support parents by improving workplace parental leave policies and improving spending on and access to services that support parents caring for dependent children.