19/09/2025
“Many parents share sleep, intentionally and unintentionally, due to factors such as infant needs (e.g., nighttime feeding, comfort) and exhaustion, despite being aware of associated risks in some circumstances. Acknowledging parental fatigue as a separate driver for shared sleep is an important addition to Salm Ward’s (2015) earlier findings. This finding highlights the common and consistent occurrence of unintentional shared sleep due to parent exhaustion, a phenomenon not adequately addressed by safe sleep approaches that assume shared sleep is always a conscious choice.
Human sleep physiology dictates that we will sleep and in the postpartum context, breastfeeding-induced hormones also promote sleep. Given our human biology, it seems appropriate that sleep safety policies should educate parents on the likelihood of falling asleep with their baby, regardless of intention, and provide strategies for how to prepare the environment to make it safer if it occurs. Simply having a separate sleep space, and an intention not to share, is likely to be insufficient.
Providing universal, neutral guidance on how to minimise risks when sharing sleep can help prevent sleep-related accidents, including among ‘accidental bedsharers’. Preparing families with this information is not a promotion of bedsharing, nor an endorsement. Rather, this ✨prepare to share✨ approach recognises that many parents do- and will-bedshare, and ensures they have access to evidence-based safety information regardless of intent or circumstance.”
~Some of the crucial discussion in our newly published integrative review-
✨ Grubb C, Young J, Downer T and D’Souza L (2025) Beyond the rules: an integrative review of parental perspectives on safer infant sleep in shared environments. Front. Public Health 13:1629678. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1629678
🔥It’s Open Access and hot off the press, so spread the word -
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1629678/full
