Why Parents Stay up: Identifying Sleep and Behavioral Predictors of Parental Bedtime Procrastination

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Abstract
Background and Objective Bedtime procrastination (BP) has emerged as an important sleep behavior linked to poor sleep health. While parental sleep deprivation has traditionally been attributed to external caregiving demands, the role of voluntary behaviors, such as BP, that contribute to insufficient sleep has been understudied. This study aimed to characterize BP in parents and examine multiple contributing factors, including parenting demands.Methods Two independent samples were analyzed. Study 1 characterized parental BP using daily sleep diary from 94 South Korean parents with children aged 6–24 months. Study 2 analyzed online survey data from 483 parents with children aged 0–25 months in the United States. Participants were classified into high and low BP groups based on a cutoff score of 33 on the Bedtime Procrastination Scale in Study 2. Group differences were compared, and predictors of parental BP were identified using the CatBoost model.Results In Study 1, parents reported BP on 78.6% of nights, with delays exceeding 40 minutes observed in 61.5% of BP nights. In Study 2, the CatBoost model demonstrated a good discriminative performance (area under the curve=0.805). Later child light off time, higher smartphone addiction, lower perceived reward, and greater unmet leisure time needs were identified as important predictors of greater BP.Conclusions Parental BP was a common behavior, occurring on the majority of recorded nights. Insufficient parental sleep may be partly driven by modifiable behavioral factors, including BP, rather than caregiving demands alone. Addressing BP may offer a practical behavioral intervention to improve parental sleep health.
Funding Information
  • Ministry of Education
  • National Research Foundation of Korea (2021S1A5A2A03061721)

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