Are you getting enough?
Most Americans have sleep troubles, but a new survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that single moms sleep less than any other demographic in the United States! And according to the Los Angeles Times, these moms also have a harder time falling and staying asleep, and they are more likely to wake up not feeling refreshed.
A sleep researcher from Live Science stated:
These results are not surprising. People tend to sacrifice sleep when they have competing priorities, such as work, family responsibilities and social obligations. Women in general seem to battle sleep issues more than men, and this starts early—right around a girl’s first period.
But single moms have it way worse than other Americans surveyed, with approximately 44% getting less than seven hours of sleep a night, compared to 38% of single dads, 31% of women in two-parent families and 30% of women without children. An interesting fact to come out of this research was that 10% of women without kids say they regularly use meds to fall asleep—more than any other group in this survey, reports PBS.
Kristi Williams, a sociology professor at Ohio State University, tells the Huffington Post,
The rise of single parenthood and non-marital fertility is arguably one of the most significant demographic trends in contemporary society, because 41% of all births in the US occur to unmarried women. So, sleep and other issues for single moms loom larger for society as a whole.