Human Culture: Expectations of Baby Sleep and Care
Human Culture: Expectations of Baby Sleep and Care
Infant Sleep Around the World
Modern Western parenting often introduces practices like separate sleeping spaces, scheduled feeds, and early weaning with infant formula. While these may be useful for some families, they are relatively recent cultural inventions and may not meet the evolved needs of the human infant (Crawford, 1994). Learn more about evolutionary basis of infant development and care here.
Cross-cultural research shows just how diverse infant sleep practices are:
- In Asian countries, babies aged 0–3 years sleep fewer total hours than in Euro-American countries but are more likely to co-sleep or room-in with their parents (Mindell et al., 2010).
- Mayan parents see infant sleep separation as neglect (Morelli et al., 1992); Italian parents call it unkind (Wolf et al., 1996).
- In many societies, babies sleep in constant contact with caregivers—during daily activity and at night. They sleep on their mother’s body or close by, fall asleep amid noise and light, and are fed responsively (Mead in Ball, 2007; Whiting, 1981; Gantley 1993).
Even within Western cultures, this kind of infant care was the norm before the late 19th century (Hardyment, 1983). Infants were assumed to sleep easily and regulate their own sleep (Stearns et al., 1996). Our biology hasn’t changed—only our cultural context has. Young babies typically slept in close contact with their mother at night and during the day were strapped to her body or another carer’s body (Ball, 2025).
Sleep and Modern Western Expectations
Historians suggest that many of our ancestors didn’t sleep in one solid block. Instead, segmented sleep—two or more shorter sleep periods broken up by wakeful intervals—may have been the human norm (Ekirch, 2001). In non-industrial societies today (such as hunter-gatherer, nomadic, or subsistence farming populations), children and adults often fall asleep and wake up as needed—rather than sticking to a strict schedule (Worthman and Melby, 2002; Worthman et al., 2008).
Sleep Was Social and Flexible
Traditional sleep settings were simple—people dozed amid everyday household noise, on mats, skins, or raised platforms, not mattresses and pillows (Bower, 1999). Families—and even strangers—often slept in shared spaces (Stearns et al., 1996; Hardyment, 1983; Handley, 2016; Ekirch, 2001). Sleep was flexible, not confined to one long stretch at night.
Industrial Revolution Implications
The arrival of factories, gas and electric light, and associated work schedules compressed daily life. Sleep became more structured and less social (Hardyment, 1983). People stayed up later due to artificial light and new forms of entertainment like radio and TV.
As women entered the workforce outside the home, it became more common for mothers and babies to be separated during the day and for maternal sleep to be prioritised at night in order to support work demands (Hegele, 2018). This separation and requirement for sleep consolidation had implications for Western baby sleep and care, further contributing to the cultural normalisation of practices such as separate rooming and sleep training (Ball, 2025, Tomori, 2018).
In the UK and US, family bedsharing was the norm until fewer than 200 years ago (Ball, 2025).
The Pressure for “Independent” Sleep
Today in many Western cultures, parents are encouraged to train their babies to sleep alone through the night as early as possible. These norms trace back to Victorian-era medical advice, which recommended:
- Separating babies from parents at night
- Ignoring infant crying
- Offering infant formula for night feeds (Tomori, 2018)
These recommendations both directly and indirectly undermined breastfeeding and promoted separation of mothers and infants. Read about the evolutionary background of human babies here to learn more about how these choices are not always in line with human baby needs.
But Biology Tells a Different Story
Human culture and practice has changed much more rapidly than evolved human biology (Barry, 2021). From a biological standpoint, expecting infants to sleep alone and silently is unrealistic. These expectations are rooted not in evolved infant needs but in the cultural shifts brought on by:
- Industrialisation
- Medicalised childbirth
- Normalisation of separate sleep spaces for infants
These changes disrupted long-standing caregiving practices that prioritised close contact and responsive care, especially during sleep.
Cultural Shift to Hospital Births
The reasons that giving birth in hospitals became more popular in the last century (by 1970s, 99% percent of births occurred in hospitals in the US) can be traced back to Victorian times (Lang et al., 2021; Loudon, 1992). In the Victorian era, anaesthesia drugs like chloroform offered relief from labour pain (Loudon, 1992), but could only be administered in hospitals. This intervention moved births away from homes and midwives toward medicalised settings.
What was early labour pain relief like?
These early anaesthetics rendered mothers incapable of caring for their babies after birth. Some also affected newborns’ breathing or alertness. As a result, babies were removed to nurseries and fed formula—setting a precedent for separation and artificial feeding (Ball, 2008).
Implications of pain relief: separation at birth
Even as newer, safer drugs were introduced, the practice continued—now justified by concerns about infection control. Babies were placed in nurseries and returned to mothers only for scheduled feeds, regardless of whether mothers were capable of caring for them (Ball, 2008).
Over the past century, routine separation following birth between mother and baby became normalised in hospitals.
Consequences of Separation
By the 1940s, hospital births were seen as safer than home births thanks to antibiotics and sterile techniques, and by the 1970s, 99% of births in the U.S. occurred in hospitals (Thomasson and Treber, 2008; Lang et al., 2021). Yet routine separation had unintended consequences:
- Less frequent breastfeeding
- Lower rates of breastfeeding initiation
- No increase in maternal sleep
- More infant crying and disrupted sleep (Keefe 1987, 1988)
Formula use became widespread, not just as a necessity for drug-affected mothers post-partum, but as a tool for feeding management (Hardyment, 1983). Even after sedation practices changed, the culture of artificial feeding and separation persisted. However, in recent years the importance of keeping mothers and babies in close contact, and of initiating breastfeeding soon after birth, have been recognised and advocated both in and out of hospital (Ball, 2025).
‘Rooming in’, where babies stay with their mother after delivery, has become standard practice in recent years in the UK, as informed by the research demonstrating the benefits of keeping mother and newborn together and the negative impacts of separation.
Baby Sleep Guidance: Cultural Factors
Much of the guidance you may encounter from well-meaning family, friends, and online influencers will have been shaped by cultural expectations of infant sleep. Many of the commonly heard sayings about baby care originate from western popular philosophies from a century or more ago (Ball, 2025). Such statements often are not based in research based evidence and/or present opinion as fact, and should be considered with this context. Much of the guidance you may encounter from well-meaning family, friends, and online influencers will have been influenced by cultural expectations of infant sleep (Ball, 2025).
Even the research that underpins infant sleep guidance does not exist in a vacuum: the proposals that receive funding, and the topics that are researched are influenced by historic and cultural factors. There can also be bias in terms of which people are included in research studies, depending on their level of education, socio-economic status or cultural background.
We recommend critical thinking when listening to guidance, considering who is providing the information, why they are providing said information (consider how there is a hugely profitable infant sleep product market), and what kind of logic or evidence they have for their statement. Want to learn more? See our trusted partners at the bottom of our homepage and read about BASIS research-based agenda.
Last Reviewed: July 2025