This study examined the roles of parenting and adolescent characteristics during ages 13 to 16 in connecting family socioeconomic status (SES) during adolescence with adult sleep in Black and White men.
This was a longitudinal school-based community study beginning in 1987-1988 when participants were enrolled in the first or seventh grade in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Participants were 291 men (54.4 percent Black, mean age = 33, SD = 2.5), who participated in 2012-2014 in a week-long study of sleep measured by actigraphy and diary. In adolescence (ages 13-16), measures of family socioeconomic status (SES) based on occupation, education, income, and public assistance; parenting based on monitoring, positive expectations for future, warm parent-child relationship, and communication; and adolescent characteristics based on anxiety, hyperactivity/impulsivity, and peer rejection. In adulthood, the study measured participant SES, minutes awake after sleep onset (WASO), duration, and diary-assessed sleep quality. Structural equation modeling confirmed significant indirect pathways: (1) low family SES in adolescence to negative parenting to low adult SES to greater WASO; (2) low family SES in adolescence to adolescent characteristics to low adult SES to greater WASO; (3) Black race to low family SES in adolescence to negative parenting to low adult SES to greater WASO; and (4) Black race to low family SES in adolescence to adolescent characteristics to adult SES to greater WASO. Similar models for duration and quality were not confirmed. The study concluded that parenting and adolescent characteristics may have an indirect association with adult sleep continuity. Parenting and mental health interventions in adolescence may improve adult sleep. (publisher abstract modified)