The present research explored how mothers' own childhood experiences are linked to their perceptions of their children's sleep regulation. It focused on collective sleeping; a practice used in the past in the Israeli kibbutz, and used a quasi-experimental research design to examine whether mothers who were raised in collective sleeping…

This literature review focuses on factors found to be associated with individual differences in infant night waking. Infant night waking that requires parent intervention to assist the infant to return to sleep is of special concern to parents because of the sleep deprivation and fragmentation that they experience. Both intrinsic and extrinsic…

Three studies examined adrenocortical activity in infants. Morning naps were associated with decreases in salivary cortisol. Riding for 40 minutes in a car lowered salivary cortisol concentrations. Thirty minutes of maternal separation in the laboratory resulted in higher salivary cortisol concentrations than did 30 minutes of play with the mother…

Eighty infants, toddlers, and preschoolers were observed before, during, and after separations from their mothers. Results suggested that there were no negative cumulative effects of repeated separations. The children seemed to adapt to repeated separations following the stressful experience with their first separation. (GLR)