Co-sleeping during infancy and early childhood: Key indings and future directions

Emergent themes from this special issue on parent-child co-sleeping are featured in this concluding article. Each of the pieces in this collection addressed one or more of the following themes: methodologies for studying parent-infant co-sleeping, physical and social characteristics of the child's sleep environment, associations between sleep location and breastfeeding, infant and child maturational issues, parental attitudes and values about sleep arrangements, special needs populations, maternal employment, sleep problems, sleep transitions, and future directions for research and policy. Together, the contributions define a context for weighing the benefits and disadvantages of family sleep arrangements during infancy and early childhood. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.