The joy of sleeping with your children

A group of Aka people in camp, from African Travels

I just woke up from a tangle of arms, legs and blankets. For the last couple of weeks, my kids and I have been sleeping together on a double camping mat on the floor of the bedroom: a habit we started while actually camping and enjoyed so much we kept right on at it. I didn’t sleep that well, to be honest. I got kicked and poked a lot. There were blanket battles, some pretty loud snoring, and even an occasional fart. But I loved it. I love feeling the warmth of their little bodies under the covers. I love squeezing my daughter’s fat little thighs. I love it when they come in for a snuggle in the early morning hours when the temperature drops. I love hearing the sound of their little whistling breaths and murmuring when they dream. I love the intimacy of it. I find it incredibly soothing, so much so that I actually find it harder to sleep alone now, like people who leave the city and can’t sleep without the ambient noise of traffic and sirens.

If you’re reading this and thinking it sounds like a nightmare, I shared your position not so long ago. Before learning about how families in traditional societies sleep, I used to think about sleep the way I think about most other things in life: a productivity exercise. More, better sleep equals a more productive day, cranking out whatever it is I crank out for the man. That’s life in a capitalist society. All you have to do is listen to the first 10 minutes of a Dr. Huberman podcast episode on sleep to realize the extent to which “sleep productivity” has become an obsession in our culture. If you follow his protocol, you wear a watch or use a device to measure your sleep duration and quality, track your how much deep sleep you are getting, avoid caffeine and alcohol, exercise at just the right time of day, and then take a shitload of expensive (unproven) vitamins to make sure you’re getting the most out of your snooze time. It’s a perfect illustration of modern folly.  

If I have learned one thing from studying traditional, small-scale societies it’s this: relationships matter far more for human well-being than productivity. If I choose to sleep with my children, it’s because I choose love over productivity. I choose to be human over being a machine. 

This is by no means intended to imply that you cannot have a full and loving relationship with your children and sleep in separate beds. Of course you can. Also, I recognize that my choice to opt out of being a highly productive worker during this phase of life is a luxury few mothers can afford. I am not in any way trying to convince you to co-sleep with your children. It’s just not for everyone. What I am trying to convince you of: the more you can let go of the need to be constantly productive, the more you will enjoy motherhood (and life). 

In a study of the Aka tribe in central Congo, researchers asked people why they decided to sleep where they did and with whom:

“When asking Aka parents why children slept where they did, the standard answer was ‘this is where the child wants to sleep.’ For instance, a 12-year-old boy started the evening in a bakola home (mud hut), but got cold and decided to move back into his parents’ home. An 8-year-old girl who was sleeping next to her mother moved across camp to sleep with her father’s first wife because she said she loved her. In another case, an elderly grandmother was sleeping alone in her home and when asked why she was alone she said, ‘I prefer when the grandchildren sleep with me but they no longer come.’ This contrasts with a 10-year-old boy who said, ‘I prefer to sleep with my grandmother because I love her; she gives me a lot and takes good care of me.’ Another 6-year-old boy who shared a bed with his 9-year-old sister and parents said, ‘I love my mother so much I want to be next to her.’”

Love and physical contact are closely related in most small-scale societies. The same research paper describes how “when the Aka sit down in camp, they are usually touching somebody.” (See photo above).

As soon as traditional foraging societies begin to shift towards agriculture, priorities change. The focus shifts more to productivity and objects and away from relationships. This can be seen in the behavior and priorities of children as young as three, who in Aka society will fight over physical proximity to a beloved older sibling and in nearby farming societies (the Ngandu) will fight over possessions. 

I find this tragic. Humans are social animals. We lived as hunter gatherers for well over 90% of our existence as a species. It has been well-documented that more than anything else, it is the quality of our relationships that make us happy. Co-sleeping with my children is one tiny way in which I am trying to reclaim some of what we have forgotten in our Western culture: that love is more important than productivity, and that sometimes snuggles are worth more than a solid 8 hours of sleep.

You can keep your sleep trackers and vitamins, Dr. Huberman, I’ll take kicks, snoring and human warmth.

The study cited is from “Ancestral Landscapes in Human Evolution: Culture, Childrearing and Social Wellbeing” By Narvaez et al.