0125 The Association Between Maternal Closeness and Sleep Health During Adolescence

Abstract Introduction Quality of the parent-child relationship is an important factor for children's psychological health and adequate sleep. Few studies, however, have focused specifically on maternal closeness and adolescent sleep. We hypothesized that there would be an association between maternal closeness and improved dimensions of sleep health including timing, duration, and quality in adolescents. Methods Data were from the age 15 wave of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth cohort. Adolescents self-reported maternal closeness on a continuous scale with four levels (“not very close,” “fairly close,” “quite close,” and “extremely close”) and bedtime, sleep duration, and nights with difficulty falling or staying asleep (N=3,241). A subset of adolescents wore an actigraph to assess sleep onset, duration, wake after sleep onset, and sleep maintenance efficiency (N=775). Separate multiple linear regression models tested maternal closeness and sleep outcomes, adjusting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, household income, family structure, and caregiver education level. Results Results showed that 84.4% of adolescents reported feeling “quite close” or “extremely close” to their mother. For each unit closer to their mother, adolescents’ self-reported sleep duration was 12.2 minutes longer (p 0.001), bedtime was 11.3 minutes earlier (p 0.001), and they reported 1.7 fewer nights with difficulty falling asleep (p 0.001) and 1.3 fewer nights with difficulty staying asleep (p 0.001). With the smaller actigraphy sample, maternal closeness was not associated with actigraphic sleep outcomes. Conclusion Cross-sectional findings suggest that maternal closeness is associated with improved self-reported sleep health as measured by longer sleep duration, earlier bedtime, and fewer nights of insomnia symptoms. However, it is not clear whether closeness directly affects sleep or whether sleeping well improves the parent-child relationship. Future research should leverage micro-longitudinal studies to assess the daily fluctuations in maternal closeness and sleep. Support (if any) R25-HL147668, R01HD073352, R01HD36916, R01HD39135, and R01HD40421