Single parents, especially women, are more likely than partnered parents and childless adults to have trouble falling asleep, wake up more frequently and feel tired in the morning, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report reveals.
About 43% of single parents in the United States with children under the age of 18 get less than seven hours of sleep a night, compared with 33% of two-parent families and 31% of adults without children.
According to Colleen Nugent, a statistician with the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics who analyzed the 2013-2014 National Health Interview Survey to develop the study, says that’s a big difference. “Sleep is another domain where single-parent families are disadvantaged compared with other family types,” she says. “Single parents get less sleep and experience more sleep-related problems than adults in other types of families.”
In addition, the yearly survey of 44,000 U.S. adults ages 18 to 64 found that women are more sleep deprived than men, whether they are mothers or not. For example, 57% of single moms interviewed said they didn’t feel well-rested when they woke up, while 46% of women in two-parent homes and 39% of women without kids felt the same.
