Sleep Practices among Parents and Childless Individuals.

While sleep is genetically determined to some extent, it is also largely socially driven. Previous research on sleep is mostly biomedical and inconsistent since the number of analysed sleep variables is limited and it often does not distinguish between genders and parents based on the age of their child/ren. Using representative data from the Czech Household Panel Study (2018) with answers from 2,017 childless individuals and 1,022 parents and employing a method of propensity score matching, the manuscript uses a sociological lens and explores the effect of parenthood on sleep duration on workdays and free days and its effect on social jetlag, misalignment between biological and social preferences. The results show that parents have similar sleep patterns to childless individuals, but mothers, in particular, are deprived of sleep during free days. Childcare for mothers is an equivalent to having an employment seven days a week instead of the average five. Parents’ sleep quality is not particularly impaired by the presence of a child/ren in comparison to childless individuals: both rate their sleep as overall rather poor.