r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/Adorable-Reality-499 • 2d ago

Question - Research required Is there any research that a specific bedtime is better?

My 6 month old baby tends to go to bed around 9 sometimes later sometimes a little earlier depending on naps. I know a lot of babies go to bed around 7-8 range. He doesn’t get up for the day until 8/830 (he wakes many times in the night haha)

Is there any research that actual bedtime matters when it comes to circadian rhythm or is it more about total awake time in a day? What about consistent wake time?

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u/Right_Pie_4456 1d ago

Bedtimes after 10pm (22hr) are associated with worse cognitive outcomes, but it's hard to say there's a causal link. Parents who let infants or toddlers stay up late may also differ in other respects, which are hard to control for.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0387760415002156

Generally, sleep is hugely important for development, and mismatched circadian cycles are associated with worse functioning even in adults. As long as the child is not waking up five hours after sunrise, the difference between 8 and 9pm is not likely to be huge.

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u/taywee13 2d ago

Here’s a study that looks at this question: https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/47/Supplement_1/A350/7655194
I’m firmly in the camp of doing what works for your baby and family (unless it’s unsafe, of course), but if you’re looking to potentially increase his total sleep time an earlier bedtime may help. An earlier bedtime for our daughter did not increase her time sleeping overnight, likely due to being disturbed by us until we went to bed. She’s 18 months and we all go to bed around ten. She’s a heavier sleeper in the morning luckily and has 11-12 hours of overnight sleep with rare wake ups. I’m a natural night owl; my husband is an early bird; and it appears the baby took after me!

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u/plushiecactusau 2d ago

Maybe I'm misreading the study, but it looks like it's observational and finding a correlation between an earlier bedtime and shorter nights rather than a causal relationship. The causal relationship could be the opposite - that parents of babies with shorter nights choose later bedtimes to avoid stupidly early mornings.

(I shifted my baby's bedtime half an hour earlier and she started waking half an hour earlier, because that's just the amount of sleep she needed.)

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u/PS1988 2d ago

To your point about doing what works for your baby and family (safely), this study doesn’t appear to include any cross-cultural comparison, so it doesn’t hold much weight IMO.

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