Single moms are the most sleep-deprived adults in the U.S., and they have poorer sleep quality compared to others. That's what the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a new study published Wednesday, according to Live Science.
NCHS conducted the National Health Interview Survey from 2013 to 2014 and found that single parents with kids younger than 18 years old were more likely to have fewer hours of sleep compared to adults from two-parent families or those with older children.
Among female single parents, 43.5 percent slept less than seven hours daily. Male single parents did just a little better than their female counterparts, with 37.5 percent of them having less than seven hours of sleep daily.
Additionally, single parents were more likely to have trouble sleeping at least four times in a week, with approximately 25 percent of female single parents and 17.3 percent of male single parents identifying with this problem.
"Research has shown that single parents have fewer financial resources, and this report finds that sleep is another domain in which single-parent families are disadvantaged," the researchers concluded in the study.
Overall, whether from a single parent family or a two-parent family, women had more trouble sleeping compared to men. However, those who did not live with children were more likely to use sleep medication than those who lived with children in the home.
"Women of all family types were more likely than men in the same family type to have more trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and to frequently wake feeling not well-rested," the report said.
Women's sleep duration and sleep quality could be influenced by their hormonal fluctuations, according to Dr. Shelby Harris, director of Behavioral Sleep Medicine at Montefiore Health System. She added that women tended to have more anxiety and stress, but single moms experience more stress that could lessen the quality of sleep.
"And once they're able to get to bed, they often can't turn their brains off since they are thinking -- or even worrying -- about everything that needs to get done the next day," Harris told HealthDay.
