Attachment and Sleep Among Toddlers: Disentangling Attachment Security and Dependency

The current study used objective measures of sleep and attachment to assess the longitudinal links between mother-child attachment security and subsequent sleep, controlling for child dependency. Results indicated that children more securely attached to their mothers subsequently slept more at night and had higher sleep efficiency, and these predictions were not confounded by child dependency. These findings suggest a unique role for secure attachment relationships in the development of young children’s sleep regulation, while addressing methodological issues that have long precluded consensus in this literature.