children's sleep

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Embodying and EmbeddingChildren's Sleep: SomeSociological Comments andObservations

by Simon Williams, Pam Lowe and Frances GriffithsUniversity of Warwick, Aston University, University ofWarwick

Sociological Research Online 12(5)6

doi:10.5153/sro.1466Received: 8 Sep 2005 Accepted: 21 Feb 2007

Published: 30 Sep 2007

Abstract

This paper, drawing on our own research findings data,explores the embodiment and embedment of sleeping inchildren's everyday/night lives. Key themes here includechildren's attitudes and feelings toward the dormant body,the processes, routines and rituals associated with going tobed and going to sleep, issues associated with bedrooms andprivacy, and finally the relationship between dormancy anddomicile. This in turn provides the basis, in the remainder ofthe paper, for a further series of reflections on the mutuallyinforming relations between the sociology of sleep and thesociology of childhood. Remaining questions and challenges

involved in researching children's sleep are also considered.Sleep, it is concluded, is not simply a rich and fascinatingsociological topic in its own right it also has the potential toshed valuable new light on a significant yet hitherto under-researched part of children's lives, contributing importantnew insights in doing so.

Keywords: Children, Childhood, Sleep, Sociology,Embodiment
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Introduction

1.1 The sociology of childhood, or perhaps more correctly asociology forchildhoods in the plural, is now a thriving field of

inquiry (Mayall 1996, 2002;James et al. 1998; Prout2000; Lee 2001). This recent upsurge of sociological interestin turn reflects and reinforces broader trends, discourses anddebates in society today concerning the voices and rights ofchildren, including the UN Convention on the Rights of theChild (agreed in 1989), which as Prout (2005: 31) comments,'surpasses the modernist notion of children as a cultural"other"', raising children's social participation as a goalalongside a commitment to their protection and provision.Recent debates, staged in the UK national press, about the

fate or future of childhood underline these trends (Brooks2006). Childhood, we might say, has well and truly come ofage, though for some critics of course it is rapidly'disappearing' (Postman 1983,Steinberg and Kincheloe 1997).

1.2 The sociology of/for childhoods has been an importantdevelopment, challenging a range of adult-centricconceptions and agendas along the way, not least the notionof childhood as somehow 'natural' or 'universal'. One aspect

of children's lives that remains stubbornly neglected or under-researched within the sociology of/for childhoods, however,concerns sleep. This perhaps is surprising given that sleep orsleeping is a key part of childhood and parenting.

1.3 To date, nonetheless, research on children and sleep hasbeen dominated by sleep science and sleep medicine,including studies of childhood sleep disorders andprofessional advice/guidance to parents how to ensure theirbaby/toddler/child has a sound night's sleep (Ferber

1985; Ferber and Kryger 1995). At one and the same time,concerns are now growing, in professional circles at least,that children are not getting 'enough' sleep (Wiggs 2007Inthis issue).

1.4 In this paper we seek to redress this disciplinaryimbalance, or at least to take a small step in that direction,through some sociological comments and observations onchildren's sleep. In part we draw on our own preliminary

research in this area for illustrative purposes, but we alsoreflect more broadly in the remainder of the paper on lessons
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for/from the sociology childhood which a sociologicalengagement with sleep raises, and on some of the remainingconceptual, theoretical and methodological challenges thatresearching children's sleep poses.

1.5 How salient and significant then is sleep in children'severyday/night lives? And what light does this shed on thesociology of childhood? It is to some provisional answers tothese questions, through our own exploratory research data,that we now turn.

Children, sleeping and everyday/night life:Findings from the frontline

2.1 Our exploratory small-scale study involved a multi-method child-centred approach with 9 children and youngpeople aged between 5 and 15 (5 girls and 4 boys). Whilst thechildren and young people were recruited through a snowballsample of parental contacts, informed consent was soughtfrom the children themselves. All the children and youngpeople were given a leaflet informing them about theresearch to help them make up their minds, and parents wereexplicitly asked not to try to influence their child's decision.

The children and young people who consented were asked tocomplete a sleep diary over a one-week period. They wereoffered a choice of audio diaries or written diaries. Successfulcompletion did not seem to be related to the type of diaryasked for, and in total only 6 of the children and young peoplemanaged to keep the diary. After the diary period the childrenand young people were interviewed in their own home using amixture of open questions and a write and draw technique.

The interviews were largely unstructured, and were basedaround 4 key areas: sleeping patterns, sleeping spaces,

autonomy in sleep decisions and feelings about sleep. If theinformant had kept a diary, elements of the diary were alsoexplored in greater depth during the interviews. The write anddraw asked for two pictures on one sheet of paper. One sideof the paper was headed by a happy face and the other sidehad a sad face. The children and young people were asked todraw something they would associate with each side inconnection to sleep. At the younger ages, the parents didfacilitate the audio diaries, but none of the parents were in

the room at the time of the interview. The final data collectedis listed in the table below:


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2.2 All data, including write and draw materials, were codedand analysed (using NVIVO) in terms of emerging themes andissues regarding the negotiation and social context ofchildren's sleeping arrangements within their families.

2.3 In terms of our data, four broad themes emerged,pertaining respectively to: (i) attitudes and feelings about

sleep(iness); (ii) going to bed/sleep; (iii) bedrooms andprivacy; (iv) dormancy and domicile. Taking each of these inturn:

(i) Attitudes and feelings about sleep(iness); Thedormant/drowsy body

2.4 Sleep consumes a good deal of children's time,particularly in the early years. By early school age, forexample, the average child will have spent more time asleep

than any of the following: all social interaction, environmentalexploration, eating, playing, all walking activity (Wiggs2004, 2005). Sleep is also of course important for children'sphysical (children quite literally grow 'up' in their sleep),social and emotional development.

2.5 Getting children to voice their attitudes and feelingstowards sleep as such, however, proved difficult (a point weshall return to later in the paper), in part no doubt because it

is something of a blank in all our lives. Little comment orjudgement was passed, directly or explicitly at least, as to
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whether or not they liked or disliked sleep, or on theembodied feelings and experiences associated with it. Theprimary way in which sleep was discussed, indeed, was interms of its embodied impact on children's everyday lives and

roles (i.e. largely in functional terms). This, in particular,occurred when the negative effects of lack of sleep whereconsidered. An eight-year-old girl, for example, remarked inher interview:

If you don't get sleep you'll just be really tired and you'll juststart falling asleep, so it's best for you to go to sleep, even ifyou only sleep like because when my dad works on nightshe only sleeps three hours a day. So it's that's still good,because then you can just go to sleep and relax you relax.

But if you don't have any sleep you'd be really tired...I thinkit's healthy when you do have a nice sleep because you'remore active in the day so you can do more things. Because ifyou were going for a running race and didn't have any sleep,you would be last

2.6 Similarly, a twelve-year-old boy stated about a nightbefore a match:

If I don't have my sleep I won't be able to play football soImake sure I'm in bed by 10 O'clock or something. () I do itmyself usually

2.7 Impacts on school performance, such as sleepiness in theclassroom, were also sometimes invoked (though lesscommonly than impacts on other non-scholastic roles inchildren's everyday lives), as the following interchange with a10 year old boy reveals:

Interviewer: What about if you don't get enough sleep how doyou feel the next day?Informant: I feel quite drowsy and tired. When I go to schoolI keep falling asleep in the lessonInterviewer: Does that happen very often?Informant: No not very often.Interviewer: What would you do about it?Informant: I'd just try to get sleep over the following week.Interviewer: Right, and would you do that yourself?Informant: I'd do it by myself if I was tired but sometimes


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mum would have to help me with stuff. Like if I'm watching aprogramme downstairs then she'll tell me to go upstairs.

2.8 Worry was also recognised as something affecting boththe quantity and quality of sleep. A thirteen-year-old girl, forexample, in her write and draw material, drew herself awakebecause she was worried about something. Her worries wouldbe 'Things like you couldn't sleep because you've fallen outwith your friend or something'

2.9 Some children, however, appeared less sure about thecosts and consequences of not getting enough sleep. An

eight-year-old girl, for example, stated:

I don't really think I should go to bed earlier. I don't mindbeing tired because it doesn't affect me at school.

2.10 Our data moreover give little indication that children,when reflecting on their own particular sleep, thought theywere not getting 'enough' sleep or that the quantity or qualityof their sleep was having an adverse affect on their everydayroles.

2.11 If articulating attitudes and feelings towardssleep(iness), as such, proved somewhat difficult for thesechildren, they were nonetheless on firmer terrain when itcame to accounts of the social context and socialarrangements within which their sleep or sleeping was quiteliterally embedded, including the processes and practicesassociated with going to bed and going to sleep.

(ii) Going to bed/sleep;


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2.12 Going to bed and going to sleep, themselves of coursefar from synonymous, is something we all do, in more or lesselaborate ways, but these processes and practices mayassume particular importance and significance in childhood.

Children's accounts of going to bed/sleep, indeed, highlighteda number of key issues here.

2.13 First, children's accounts of going to bed/sleephighlighted the degree to which, depending on age, bedtimeswere 'imposed' or 'negotiated' between parent and child.Consider, for example, the following extract from a thirteen-year-old girl:

Before Big Brother started, I was going to bed at about in-

between yes any time between half nine and say quarterpast ten, but then I was watching that so I was going to bedat about quarter to eleven or eleven later. I just take myselfto bed but mum will tell me if she wants me to go to bed. I

just tend to go anyway. But I'm not downstairs at elevenbecause I watch it with Max (brother) in Max's room. Mumdoesn't really see but she'll shout up 'Go to bed now!'. I'm

just like, 'Let me just watch it to the end it's only a couple ofminutes!' and she's like and sometimes she mum would

just say, 'No!' and then I'd just go to bed, or sometimes I'll say'Ok.' but then you have to go to bed, you know? I suppose itdepends how I behave as well.

2.14 The last line in this extract is particularly revealing,highlighting the relationship or moral economy betweenbedtime and behaviour where 'good' behaviour may berewarded with staying up and 'bad' behaviour with going tobe bed early.

2.15 Even the youngest children in our sample felt that'bedtime' was not always fair as the following exchangeshows:

Interviewer: What time do you normally go to bed?Informant: Seven.Interviewer: When your mummy says it's bedtime how doesthat make you feel?Informant: When I'm tired it makes me feel happy but whenI'm not tired it makes me feel a bit sad or grumpy (Interview

5year old girl).


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2.16 A second key issue concerned children's own articulatedfears and anxieties, worries and insecurities about going tobed/sleep and about sources of security and comfort thathelped them to do so. One of the youngest informants in our

study (a 5 year old girl), for example, described in her audiosleep diary how:

When I go to sleep at night it's all dark and I leave the dooropen and sometimes I have my mummy in bed with mehugging me. Sometimes she sings along to the songs I've goton my tape and I don't really like going to sleep when thelanding light is not on and it's really dark in my bedroombecause I feel all scared and I feel like a werewolf's going to

jump out at me.

2.17 As she further explained in her interview, whilst herpreference would be to always have her mother to remainwith her, she will make do with both light and the noise of asong or story tape to feel secure in sleep. These provideconstant connection to the waking world, and are sufficient toward of any 'evils' in the night.

2.18 Older children too may require some comfort in thenight. Rather than a constant, however, these comfortsbecome necessary in specific situations, as the followingextract illustrates:

I sleep with a Teddy Bear.so when I'm away then well,when I'm on holiday when I go to sleep with my Nan who livesaway, then I take it. But when I'm at my (other) Nan's I don'tand when I'm at my dad's I don't () I do have one here(her dads) but it's not as comfortable (Interview 8 year oldgirl)

2.19 This girl describes how she no longer needed to sleepwith her Teddy every night in the way that she used to whenshe was younger, although she did still rely on it whensleeping in less familiar places. At her father's house she haddifferent cuddly toys, which she did take to bed with her butthey did not bring the same familiar comfort as the one sheused at home. Yet when asked to draw about the good thingsabout sleep she drew her teddy:


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2.20 Other children spoke about TV or radio as helping themget off to sleep. As one boy put it:

'I'm finding it quite easy with like the radio or the tellybecause like some of the time they put me to sleep. youcan do it on the timer but I have my remote control I listento something to get to sleep' (Boy aged 10).

2.21 His write and draw also portrayed his TV as a 'goodthing' about sleep:

'I've drew me sleeping without waking up at night and

watching the telly or listening to the radio which helps me getto sleep.'

(iii) Bedrooms and privacy;

2.22 These accounts of going to bed in turn key into a closely

related set of issue to do with children's feelings about anduses of their bedrooms. The sharing of bedroom space was a


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particularly significant issue, for understandable reasonsperhaps. All of the children that had their own bedroomappreciated the space that this afforded them, in terms ofissues of privacy and the opportunity to makes this space

their 'own', particularly if they had had to share previously asthe following extracts show:

Well I like having it (bedroom) because if you're upset youcan go up there and you can have some privacy to yourselfand you can just think about if you've done somethingwrong, then you can think about and you have lots of privacyto think (). I do other things upstairs as well. I read myReading Book from school and my Library Books. I don'tnormally read downstairs because downstairs is too noisy.

(Interview, eight-year-old girl)Interviewer: Do you like having your own room?Informant: Yes, because a few years ago I used to have toshare a room with my brother and then when and like hegets up and wakes up really early and I kept waking up then.(Interview Boy aged 10)

2.23 It was the fifteen-year-old boy in our study, however,who apparently felt the most conflict and resentment aboutbedroom space, as his write and draw material illustrates inrelation to his brother:

'The last time it happenedOh! He wanted to turn the lightoff when I was reading, so I hit him with the book andbecause I'm bigger I got to keep the light on'.

2.24 Our data also pointed to various forms of 'temporarysharing' or 'eviction' in relation to children's bedroom space,


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particularly when other family members or guests stay andspace is at a premium: another important facet or featurechildren's (minority group) status and (limited) privacy rights.

This indeed can be a particularly significant issue in

stepfamilies were bedroom space may become a contestedarea. The nine-year-old girl we interviewed, for example,described how her stepfather has two children and how theyregularly come and stay. Her eleven-year-old stepsister notonly sleeps in her room, but seemed to consider it a 'shared'bedroom: a source of some friction or tension it seemed. 'Butit is not, it's mine', she stated, and then reported how if herstepsister was noisy at night and woke her up, she would beforced to leave her room and go into her sister's room.

2.25 Embedded within these accounts, as this last exampleclearly suggests, were related tales and testimonies ofsleep disturbance anddisruption due to the'inconsiderateness' of other family members: a violation, ineffect, of both the sleeper's right to sleep and their privacy. Athirteen-year-old girl, for example, made the following sleepdiary entry:

Tuesday 7:15am: Last night I decided notto watch the lateBig Brother (Channel 4 TV show) so I went to bed at 10:00pm.I started to sleep but Max [brother] kept on running in andmaking me jump and wake up (he was filling me in what washappening on TV). After four times he stopped and I finallygot to sleep at 10:20pm. I woke up when my alarm went off at6:45am, but I fell back to sleep until 7:00am. Apart from that Iwas not disturbed.

2.26 Similarly, the following sleep diary extract from thefifteen-year-old girl in our study, points to a further source of

tension and resentment (in addition to conflicts with her sisteridentified earlier), this time in relation to her stepfather:

I woke up at about 8.15 and fell back to sleep. I again wokeup at 8.45 because I have this monkey door-bell on mybedroom door and my step dad kept setting it off so I tried toignore it but I couldn't so when I got out of bed I was in aREALLY bad mood because I love my bed (emphasis andspelling as in original)


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2.27 Changing family circumstances also impacted onchildren's sleep. The eight-year-old girl in our study, forexample, described how her sleep, due to recent familychanges, was interrupted by babies both at home and at her

dad's. She reported:

Well now I live with my niece because Lauren (Aunt) fell outwith her boyfriend and now she's living with us with her baby,which is my nieceThe other night I think I heard her Ithink it was Wednesday night, she woke up at half-five andLauren went to go downstairs to get the milk and I heard themicrowave clanging, so that woke me up () But it isannoying living with a baby and I don't even get a breakanymore, because when I'm here (at her dads) I'm with Molly

(half-sister) and when I'm at home I've got my niece.

2.28 Children were also sometimes called up to help with thedisturbed sleep of other family members, usually youngersiblings, which in turn disturbed or disrupted their own sleep.A fifteen-year-old girl, for example, reported that when hermother was on nightshift, her younger sister often disturbedher own sleep as she was reluctant to seek solace from herstepfather. She wrote in her sleep diary:

Monday night: I went to my room at 11:10pm after BigBrother. By the time I got into bed and began to nod off it was11: 25 but then my little sister came in and said she couldn'tsleep, so I got up and put her back to bed. I finally fell asleepat about 11:40 and got up when my alarm went off at7:10am.

2.29 There was very little mention here or elsewhere,however, of how these children themselves disturbed or

disrupted other family members' sleep, including theirparents. Undoubtedly many instances of this kind could havebeen cited, but, in the absence of any prompting on our part,few were.

(iv) Dormancy and domicile: Children as 'multi-site' or'mobile' sleepers?

2.30 The fourth and final theme in our data concerned themultiple sites or locations in which children slept. Dormancy

and domicile, as Schwartz (1970) astutely notes, areintimately related. People, in the main, tend to sleep where
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they dwell, thereby tying bed to abode and sleep toresidency. When families do not all live 'under the same roof',however, children's sleeping places and spaces may rapidlymultiply, including stays with separated parents (usually

dads) and/or with grandparents, as the following extractillustrates:

Well I'm sleeping at my Grandad's house (tonight) and onMonday I'm sleeping at my mums, on Tuesday I'm sleeping atmy Nan's and on Wednesday and Thursday no I'm onlysleeping on Thursday so on Wednesday and Friday I'msleeping at my mum's and on Saturday I'm sleeping at myNan's. I'm not sleeping at my dad's this week. (Interview:eight-year-old girl).

2.31 'Stopovers' or 'sleepovers' at friends' houses,particularly as a weekend 'treat', add another importantdimension to the picture here. A thirteen-year-old girl, forinstance, made the following entry in her sleep diary:

Saturday 10: 20am: Last night I slept at Clare's house, mybest friend who lives two doors away. We were laughing and

joking until 12:30, then we got into bed, and I slept from thatpoint until 6:45 when I woke up sneezing (hay fever). I fellasleep again but woke up 3 times, 7:10, 7:45, 8:30 before Ifinally got up with Clare at about 9:30 when the alarm wentoff.Stopovers/sleepovers, as this suggests, provides an indexicalexpression of children's family and friendship networks inwhich sleep is embedded.

2.32 All in all, then, these findings suggests a rich anddetailed picture of the social context of children's sleep and

sleeping arrangements. So what light then does this shed onthe sociology of childhood and, reciprocally, what light doesthe sociology of childhood shed on sleep?

Lessons for/from the sociology of childhood

3.1 Sleep, it is clear, may well be a rich and fascinatingsociological topic in its own right, but it also has the potential,as our own data demonstrate, to shed valuable new light onexisting topics and concerns within the sociology of childhoodand beyond. A number of points may be ventured in this


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respect, pending further sociological research in this rich yethitherto neglected domain.

3.2 Perhaps the first, most obvious point to stress here, asthe title of this paper suggests, is that sleep is a clearlyboth embodied andembedded in children's everyday/nightlives in a number of interconnected, mutually reinforcingways. To the extent, indeed, that the body is now being moreexplicitly incorporated within the sociology of childhood, thenthis of necessity involves investigation of the children'ssleeping as well as their waking lives, particularly in view ofthe large proportion of children's lives spent asleep. As a lossof waking consciousness in or to the intersubjective world,sleep powerfully reminds us of the daily corporeal limits of our

participation, in adulthood as well as childhood, in the socialorder. The importance of sleep, as both liberationfrom andpreparation forthe social order, is also underlinedhere however: a source of particular concern, it seems, givengrowing concerns and anxieties in professional and popularculture that children are not getting 'enough' sleep. Whetheror not, of course, a 'special' case can be made for theparticular significance of sleep in childhood, is a moot point. Agood deal of children's time, to repeat, is certainly spent

asleep. Sleep is also, of course, learntin families, and part of'good' or 'bad' parenting may, rightly or wrongly, be judged interms of whether or not parents ensure their children aregetting 'enough' sleep, whatever that means. A 'happy','healthy' child, who is able to realise their true 'potential', sothe modern day mantra goes, is a well-slept child.

3.3 The sociological notion ofdoing sleeping (cf.Taylor 1993),at one and the same time, extends the sociological analysis ofchildren's own embodied agency in interesting, important and

novel ways, tying into the more general sociological notion ofdoing childhood. By switching the sociology focus from theevent of sleep as such, to the myriad social activities andevents which both precede and proceed it, a rich new pictureopens up of the social world ofsleeping in children's lives --the meanings, methods, motives and management(cf.Taylor1993) of children's sleeping, that is to say, within families.

This, as we have seen, includes going to bed and going tosleep, parent-child negotiationsaround bedtimes, as well as

children's own roles and responsibilities for the sleeping-waking routines and welfare of other family members,
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particularly younger siblings (see also Mayall 1996on thispoint). Children's sleep times or schedules, moreover, arethemselves heavily invested in notions of being a 'big' child, a'little' child or a baby (Christensen, personal communication).

The doing of sleeping also alerts us to the social contextswithin which sleeping occurs, particularly thespatialisation/sequestration of dormant/sleeping bodies andassociated issues to do with intimacy and privacy regardingbodies, bedrooms and behaviour. What we see here then,through the sociological lens of the doing of sleeping, is animportant new arena in which children's own embodiedagency, and the intergenerational power relations withinwhich it is embedded, comes to the fore.

3.4 The doing of children's sleeping is also, of course,intimately bound up with a variety of 'objects' associated withgoing to bed and doing sleeping. Teddy bears and otherfavourite soft toys, cloths and blankets, for example, as ourown data suggest, may provide a source of comfort orsecurity for the child, thereby helping ease or facilitatepassage both into and out of the sleep role: in-between'transitional objects' and 'transitional phenomena' inWinnicott's (1958) terms (Lee, personal communication) [1].

'Finding', 'fetching' and 'playing' with these transitionalobjects, moreover, as part and parcel of bed time rituals andparent-child routines, may also be important in terms of thechild's own identity formation and development, servingsimultaneous as both 'part' and 'not-part' of the child (Lee,personal communication). Other forms of comfort associatedwith bed time, including various 'creature comforts' such asclandestine thumb sucking under the sheets, add a furtherimportant dimension to the picture here (cf. Moran Ellis2005), themselves underling the embodied pleasures,

vulnerabilities and (in)securities associated with sleep,sleeping and night-time (Williams 2007). Dreams, dreamingor bedtime fantasies and narratives may also, of course,influence children's sleep in various ways, including indeedtheir very wish or desire to go to bed/sleep (Christensen,personal communication).

3.5 These issues, however, are themselves socially, culturallyand historically variable matters. Children's concern for

privacy, for example, articulated in our own study, needs tobe seen as a product of their own specific social, cultural and
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historical circumstances, including their urban location. Inother cultures and contexts, indeed, both past and present,the sharing of sleeping arrangements amongst familymembers is often the norm: a taken-for-granted fact in the

local culture within which it embedded -- see, for example,Steger and Brunt (2003) and Van der Geest 2006 on differentsleeping cultures, and; Ekirch 2001; Stearns et al. (1996) andElias (1978/1939) for historical insights on sleep and sleepingin the past.

3.6 These issues in turn connect to current (sociological)debates on the changing nature and character ofcontemporary childhood at a number of levels. Anexamination of children's sleep, for example, opens up a

fruitful window onto the changing character and context ofeveryday family life, including issues to do with thecoordination and management of both children's andparent's time. Contemporary families, as Prout (2005: 24)notes, 'have to engage with complex timetables in order tocoordinate the activities of different members', including bothschool and work. Children indeed, as Mayall (2002: 64)comments, find themselves ever more 'scholarised' (aslearners not workers) with 'free time reduced both in and out

of school.' Whilst the evidence does not appear to support theclaim that children and parents spend 'less time together', itis nonetheless true that 'both experience a time squeeze'(Prout 2005: 24). Sleep, as such, may be viewed as a criticalissue in the everyday/night management of householdtimetables, particularly in the context of any such 'timesqueeze' where 'home' itself is now increasingly likely to beexperienced by children as a place of 'comings and goings'(Prout 2005; Christensen et al. 2000). Bedtime or night-time,moreover, may be viewed in terms of the 'qualities of time'

for children; the quality, in particular, of having time for'peace and quiet' in which children can 'lie in bed thinkingabout(something)' (Christensen 2002; Christensen, personalcommunication).

3.7 This in turn links to the rapidly changingtechnologies within which childhoods are embodied andembedded. Televisions, computers and other forms ofentertainment, as various studies show (Van den Bulck 2004),

are commonly found in children's bedrooms. Text- messagingat any time of the day or night is another commonly reported
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pursuit or pastime amongst children and adolescents (Vanden Bulk 2003). As these new 'childhood' pre-sleep activitiesbecome more widespread, sleep experts argue, so the moretraditional (calming, relaxing) ones such as reading or being

read to, have declined (Wiggs 2004: 3), though this itself,presumably or perhaps, is class dependent. They are alsorelatively 'unstructured' activities without clearly defined startand end points; activities, furthermore, which are not'compensated' for at other points in the week(end) (Van denBulck 2004). Children, in other words, it is claimed, are'increasingly being bombarded with electronic stimulationuntil lights go out'. 'Go to bed', moreover, 'may no longermean "go to sleep", but rather "go to your bedroom andamuse yourself until you get so tired that you fall asleep with

the video still running"' (Wiggs 2004: 4).

3.8 Certainly, as we have seen, our own data confirmed thattelevisions and computers were a staple feature orpermanent fixture in many children's bedrooms, withimportant implications for their bedtime routines if not theirsleep quantity or quality. Yet the main sources of disturbanceand disruption, in these children's eyes at least, had less todo with television or computers, and more to do with siblings,

bedroom space and other family members. Technologies, inother words, for these children, were often seenas facilitating sleep compared to those 'uncontrollable'humans who frequently disturbed and disrupted their sleep(Christensen, personal communication) [2].

3.9 Another key issue linking sleep to the changing natureand character of contemporary childhood concernsthe fragmentation of family forms, including an increase indivorces, cohabitating, extra-marital births and the growth in

stepfamilies and lone parent families (Prout 2005: 24). Againour data pay testimony to these trends, particularly themanner in which children's own sleeping arrangements areindexical of these shifting family forms and the multiplelocations within which they are embedded.

3.10 Contemporary processes ofglobalisation (botheconomic and cultural) are also, of course, serving toreconfigure childhoods in multiple if not contradictory ways,including simultaneous trends towards a 'common globalconception of childhood' and 'a growing recognition of its
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diversity' (Prout 2005: 34). Inequalities, however, haveintensified in the global era, creating 'both greater wealth andmore inequality within national economies' for those in therichest parts of the world, whilst the 'world's poorest people

are getting poorer' (Prout 2005: 18-20). Again sleep providesanother valuable window on to these global inequalities. Thefragile, fickle, fateful sleep of children (and adults) in thosepoor, war-torn, famine-stricken, disease-ridden, parts of theworld today, for example, who exist on less than a dollar aday, provides a powerful reminder not simply that sleep isa basic human right, but that poor sleep itself is intimatelyrelated to if not a proxy for other forms of deprivation, bothmaterial and non-material in kind. This in turn casts a longshadow over contemporary debates, in the affluent Western

world, as to whether or not children are getting 'enough'sleep: a debate, that is to say, which rarely includes orextends to children or childhoods in the majority world see,for example, Punch (2003) on 'childhoods in the majorityworld'.

3.11 These insights, however, important as they are, merely'consolidate' existing research agendas within the sociologyof childhood. Yet a full and proper sociological engagement

with sleep, we wish to argue, takes us 'beyond' theseconventional concerns or preoccupations, to promising newthemes and directions within the sociology of childhood.Writers such as Prout (2005) and Lee (2001), for example,have recently called for new directions in childhood studieswhich take us far beyond the reproduction of oppositionaldichotomies (such as nature-culture, structure-agency,individual-society, being-becoming) in favour of non-dualisticanalytical resources. Childhood, for these writers, drawing onthe likes of Latour, Deleuze and Guattari for inspiration, is a

heterogeneous, complex, hybrid assembly of already 'impure'social, technical and biological elements or entities that is notreadily reducible to one or other side of these modernistdualities or dichotomies. This is a theoretical position, in otherwords, in which childhood is reconceptualised through thedestabilised and pluralized language of non-linearity,hybridity, networks and mobilities. As Prout puts it:

Once social life is recognized as heterogeneous then the a

priori parcelling out of entities (people, adults, children,bodies, minds, artefacts, animals, plants, architectures etc.)
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into culture or nature becomes unthinkable. Socialphenomena must be comprehended as complex entities inwhich a medley of culture and nature is given as a conditionof their possibility. There are no more pure entities, only

hybrids that Latour refers to as 'quasi-subjects' and 'quasi-objects' (2005: 81).

3.12 The Deleuzo-Guattarian notion ofassemblages isparticularly useful here, itself underlining the heterogeneity ofthe world. The world, from this perspective, including itshuman and animal parts, is seen as a set of 'assemblagesconstituted from heterogeneous elements' (Prout 2005: 114).

These assemblages, which supplementand extend humancapacities and capabilities in multiple ways, involve

themobilisation of heterogeneous materials human, animal,mineral, plant in networks that are themselves emergent,productive, dynamic, complex and contingent. What we havehere then, in effect, is a necessarily 'impure' picture of humanlife, both adult and child, as a process of 'multiple becomings'(Lee 2001).

3.13 Theorizing children's sleep/sleeping in this way, weventure, provides another powerful illustration of this hybrid,heterogeneous view of life. Like childhood itself, sleep is bestconceived in 'impure' terms: a hybrid, complex andcontingent product of biological, psychological, social andcultural elements. The doing of children's sleeping, in turn,throws into critical relief a complex series of assemblages,including baby-cot-alarm, parent-child-sleep, body-bed-bedroom and child-techno-toy. Bedrooms, for example, as wehave seen, are populated by a variety of mundane artefactsas well toys and other information and communicationtechnologies (ICTs) which children enlist, enrol and

orchestrate in a variety of ways. Sleeping, moreover,returning to a point raised earlier, is best seen in termsofnetworks of actual and virtual relations (Crossley 2004),including both (extended) family and friendship networks.Debates as to whether or not children are getting 'enough'sleep may also be viewed afresh from this perspective interms of the mobilisation of a variety of discourses that arisefrom particular assemblages or alliances of interests such asprofessional-parent-child, state-parent-child or

pharmaceutical-professional-child.
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3.14 Viewed in this way, then, the hybrid nature of sleep andthe heterogeneous assemblages and networks within whichchildren's sleeping is embodied and embedded, powerfullyillustrate and underline the need for these new directions in

childhood studies.

Researching children's sleep: Remainingquestions and challenges

4.1 Despite these promising developments, a number of keyquestions and challenges remain in researching children'ssleep.

4.2 First, getting children to talkmay prove difficult at the

best of times, but getting them to talk about sleep may bedoubly difficult, as we found in our own pilot work. Thisperhaps is understandable, given the subject matter inquestion. Sleep, after all, is something of a 'blank' in all ourlives. Children, moreover, may regard sleep as an 'uncool'topic to talk about, in the company of their peers at least(preferring instead to boast about staying up), though thiscontention, of course, requires further investigation.

4.3 Getting children to fill in or record sleep diaries may alsoprove difficult, as we found to our cost in our own pilot work.There were clear gender differences here, not simply in termsof the fullness of the diary entries, but in terms of completingthem at all (girls were better than boys on both counts).Batteries for the audio-recorded version of the sleep diary,moreover, had a nasty habit of disappearing given other morepressing priorities such as the need, as one boy openlyconfessed, to replace the flat batteries in his Discman.Recruiting parents to help build up a picture of their children's

sleep may be one way forward here. But this, of course,harbours its own problems and difficulties, particularly if theobject of the exercise is to adopt a child-centred methodologywhich prioritises children's own voices and perspectives.

4.4 Detailed observational or ethnographic studies of sleepand family life provide another option, but again thepracticalities and ethics of doing so weigh heavily in thebalance sheet. Participantobservation, for example, is a non-

starter if it is sleeping we are interested in: a contradiction interms indeed for any of us, researcher or otherwise. And


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researchers, of course, cannot sleep with or share beds withthose they study compared to other aspects of their lives theycan share, be witness to or participate in (e.g. socialising,eating, working). If sleep, moreover, in the Western world at

least, is deemed a personal and private matter which onlyfamily members or intimate others are party or privy to (cf.Elias' (1978/1939) 'civilising process'), then what right orlicense does the social scientist have to watch or pry, spy orintrude on the 'secret life' of the dormant body, particularlywhen sleep itself is a heightened state ofembodied vulnerability(cf. Williams 2007). Where do we drawthe line? Is nothing sacred? To the extent that the legitimatedomain of sociological inquiry is delimited to the 'doing' ofsleeping -- i.e. the meanings, methods, motives and

management of sleeping (cf.Taylor 1993) -- then thingsadmittedly may be less problematic, but even so, researchingsleep may still pose awkward or tricky ethical as well asmethodological dilemmas which we have barely begun toacknowledge let alone address.

4.5 These issues in turn map onto a further series oftheoretical and methodological challenges or dilemmas forsociologists interested in sleep. First, without in any way

wishing to undermine or underplay the importance ofsubjective data, we must nonetheless confront the fact thatpeople themselves, whether children or adults, may not bethe best judges when it comes to either the quantityorthe qualityof their sleep if that indeed is whatwe sociologists wish to study (another moot point). We onlyever indirectlyaccess or audit our own sleep. The relationshipbetween subjective and objective measures of sleep quantityor quality, as this suggests, is far from simple orstraightforward. Use of watch actigraphy may be useful in this

context, but it still only provides a proxy measure of sleep(based on movement in bed) and adds very little in terms ofgood, rich sociological data. Second, following directly onfrom this last point, it is really onlypre- andpost-sleepperspectives, processes and practices that sociologists, in themain, are interested in and can access through theconventional sociological toolkit: something which, wittinglyor otherwise, reaffirms rather than challenges thepredominant waking concerns of the discipline. A sociology of

sleep, indeed, may itself be something of a contradiction interms. This also begs another awkward or tricky question for
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any aspiring sociological engagement with sleep: is it sleep intruth we are really interested in, or all the thingsthat surround, inform, induceand influence it? The latter wesuspect.

4.6 Researching sleep then, in childhood and adulthood,raises a host of questions and challenges for the sociologist(both theoretical and conceptual, methodological and ethicalin kind), which, to date at least, remain largely unansweredand unaddressed.

Concluding remarks

5.1 There are two main conclusions to be drawn from this

paper.

5.2 First and foremost, in keeping with sociology in general,sleep is a strangely neglected issue within the sociology ofchildhood to date: strange, that is to say, because sleep iscentral to the experience of both childhood and parenting. Itis not simply a case of what new light the sociology of sleepcan shed on childhood, however, but reciprocally, of whatlight the sociology of childhood can shed on sleep.

5.3 Children, as our data suggest, are active constructors andnegotiators of their sleeping as well as their waking liveswithin families, including the when, where, whatand withwhom of sleep. Children indeed painted a rich and detailedpicture of the social contextof their sleep lives and sleepingarrangements, thereby reinforcing the need to takean embodied and embedded viewpoint on these matters.

5.4 But in forging and reflecting on these links between the

newly emerging sociology of sleep and the well establishedsociology of childhood, we have also highlighted someprofitable new lines of inquiry in which the hybrid or 'impure'nature of sleep and sleeping, both in childhood andadulthood, is brought to the fore. Sleeping in childhood, wehave argued, is both done and undone in multiple waysthrough diverse assemblages and networks. We learn to sleepin families and sleeping occurs in complex networks of bothactual and virtual social relations (cf. Crossley 2004).Sleeping, as such, is never entirely an isolated affair.
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5.5 The other main conclusion concerns the remainingquestions and challenges which researching (children's) sleepposes. It is not our intention here, of course, to reinforce pastprejudices that children are somehow inherently or

intrinsically 'difficult' or 'impossible' to research: far from it.Rather, we simply wish to raise the fact that researchingsleep, both in childhood and adulthood, poses a series oftheoretical and conceptual, methodological and ethicalchallenges, many of which remain to be addressed let aloneresolved. To the extent indeed that sleep, as an embodiedstate of vulnerability, is closely bound up with issues ofprivacy and trust, intimacy and taboo, then questions ofintrusiveness loom large, particularly if it is sleep as suchrather than the doing of sleeping we are interested in. To the

extent, however, that it is the 'doing' of sleeping whichprovides our problematic, then this at best representsan extension rather than a radical departure from thepredominant waking concerns of much sociological researchto date.

5.6 Whether or not, of course, the focus should be first andforemost on children's sleep or sleeping as such, or onthe status of children and the negotiation of sleeping within

families, is another moot point. Whatever one's choice orpreference, however, the socially, culturally and historicallyvariable nature of children's sleep and sleeping arrangementswithin families -- including issues of privacy and trust,intimacy and taboo -- should also of course be borne in mind,both locally and globally.

5.7 Much remains to be done then in resolving thesedilemmas and taking these research agendas forward, boththeoretically and empirically, in a productive and ethically

sensitive fashion. This paper, we hope, is one small step inthat direction: a rallying or wake up call, in effect, and acatalyst to future sociological research, dialogue and debatein this hitherto dormant domain.

Notes

1Winnicott's (1958) 'object relations' approach also adds a

further important temporal dimension into the picture here
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