We’ve all heard how important it is to get enough quality sleep, but apparently our kids didn’t get the memo. And when they wake up, we wake up, and that keeps a lot of us mommies from being at our best the next day. We long for long, interrupted sleep to restore us, but a new study finds that sleeping for just an extra hour a night can help boost wages and productivity.
Researchers looked at data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which followed 14,000 families from a child’s birth to age 25. And the info shows that moms who get an additional hour of rest also get an increase in employment of 4% points, a 7% increase in hours worked - which is especially good if you’re getting paid by the hour. It even raises household income by 10 to 11% and increases job satisfaction a little, 0.01 points.
The research also quantifies how tough it is to have your little one interrupt your sleep. Waking up with a kid once a night can decrease a mom’s average amount of sleep by 30 minutes. All moms know this to be true because we’ve all been up with hungry infants, sick kids and because of bad dreams many, many times before.
This study also shows that children’s interruptions also affect dads - but only half as much as moms. And not a single mother out there is surprised by that. So we’ve known that getting good sleep is important, but now we know exactly how valuable just an extra hour of it can be.
Source: Working Mother