across 108 countries
The State of
Parent & Baby Sleep
May 2026
The largest survey of its kind reveals what’s really happening behind closed nursery doors, and it’s not what the highlight reels show.
Report By
Co-Founder & Chief Parenting Officer
Former Chief Technologist, Good Housekeeping
4 in 5 parents in our survey are running on less than six hours of sleep a night. This isn’t a phase.
For most families, it’s the baseline.
The 7–9 Month Peak
Nobody Warns You About
Everyone talks about the 4-month regression. But our data shows the real peak in night waking happens at 7–9 months, when 67% of babies wake 3 or more times a night. That’s higher than any other age.
The Naps Reality Check
Nap patterns shift dramatically as babies grow. Here’s what the data shows at each age.
Half of babies under 7 months take short naps (under 60 min). After 7 months, longer consolidated naps become the norm, but only if sleep pressure and rhythm are in sync.
How Are Parents Really Feeling?
Less than 1% of parents in our survey described themselves as “energized.” The vast majority, 82%, are running on empty.
The Doomscrolling Guilt Cycle
Sleep-deprived parents reach for their phones. The phones reach back with guilt. We pulled the cross-tab to see how tightly the loop closes.
Sleep deprivation creates a feedback loop. Parents are too exhausted to do restorative self-care, so they reach for their phones. The phones serve up content that immediately triggers feelings of inadequacy and guilt. The exhaustion → scroll → guilt cycle is the most consistent emotional pattern in the entire dataset, a 52-percentage-point gap between parents at the two ends of the phone-escape scale. Based on 39,163 frequent phone-escape parents vs 7,031 who almost never use their phone this way.
The Co-Sleeping Catch-22
Parents who write about co-sleeping describe it as a deal: less independent sleep, but in exchange for more stretched-out rest. We checked the receipt.
Parents trade independent sleep for the promise of less waking. The data shows the trade doesn’t pay. Co-sleepers’ babies wake more (+12 pp). They settle slower initially. Parents feel just as exhausted. And contact napping, often paired with co-sleeping, produces shorter naps, not longer ones. The data doesn’t argue for or against co-sleeping. It just shows that the implicit deal, “this is hard but it gets us more rest”, isn’t the deal that’s actually being made. Based on 10,605 parents who mentioned co-sleeping vs 57,761 who didn’t.
When You Have a Village, the Bedroom Holds Together
The headline finding, 71% of parents feel distant from their partner, masks a sharp split. Where you fall on it depends on whether you have help.
Based on 61,489 married-partner households vs 662 households where parents named extended family as part of their care setup. Small extended-family cohort, read the gap as directional, not precise.
Across every emotional measure, parents with a village fare meaningfully better: depleted-often drops 18 pp, guilt-often drops 15 pp, exhausted-or-drained drops 21 pp. Sleep deprivation turns the modern isolated nuclear household into transactional survival, but families with extended help absorb the load differently. This isn’t about household structure. It’s about whether the load gets distributed.
Not All Parents Are in the Same Boat
Same overall exhaustion, two very different lived experiences. Where the divergence is biggest:
Single parents feel depleted at an 8-point higher rate
Based on 5,104 single parents vs 61,489 partnered parents.
The Full-Time Work “Paradox”, Solved
A surprising finding from the data: babies of full-time working parents wake less than babies of stay-at-home parents (50% vs 62% wake 3+ times per night). The temptation is to read this as “structured working-parent routines win.” We crossed the cohorts to test that.
It’s not the routine. It’s the babies. Bedtime distribution and time-to-fall-asleep are essentially identical between the two cohorts. What differs is age composition: only 10% of working full-time parents have a 0–3-month-old, vs 25% of home full-time parents. Working parents skew past the peak-waking phase. The “paradox” is mostly age in disguise.
- Working FT, bedtime before 8pm: 56.7%
- Home FT, bedtime before 8pm: 51.5% (a 5pp difference, not a routine difference)
- Working FT babies under 4 months: 10.4%
- Home FT babies under 4 months: 24.9% (the actual driver)
What Parents Told Us
In Their Own Words
Beyond the multiple-choice answers, more than one in three parents wrote additional context about their situation. Here’s what emerged.
The Co-Sleeping Reality: Survival, Not Strategy
More than 2 in 5 parents who shared additional context mentioned co-sleeping, and the overwhelming pattern wasn’t planned co-sleeping. It was desperation.
Parents described falling into bed-sharing after months of failed attempts to get their baby to sleep independently.
“We end up co-sleeping after the first 2–3 night wakings. I never planned this.”
“Co-sleeping but wish we weren’t. Waking 7–12 times a night. Comfort feeding.”
“We co-sleep out of desperation. I never get a sleep.”
“She starts in her room then walks into ours at 2am. When I’m too tired, we just co-sleep.”
The Reflux Surprise
15% of parents mentioned reflux in their written responses, making it the third most common theme after co-sleeping and contact naps. But here’s what surprised us: babies with reflux don’t actually wake more than other babies.
This challenges the common assumption that reflux is the root cause of night waking. While reflux is real and uncomfortable, the data suggests that frequent waking is near-universal across this age group, reflux or not. Parents of reflux babies may be attributing normal developmental waking to their child’s reflux.
The Contact Nap Cycle
26% of parents who wrote in mentioned contact napping, holding their baby for the entire duration of every nap. It’s often described alongside co-sleeping as part of a broader pattern of around-the-clock physical dependency.
“Contact naps only. Currently cosleeping a lot.”
“Naps the best when contact napping. Won’t go down in her crib.”
“She loves contact naps and falling asleep on me. I can’t put her down without her waking instantly.”
“Mix of contact naps, pram naps, cot naps during the day. Our toddler is also in my care so sometimes naps are impacted.”
Parents Who Found Their Way Through
Real Betteroo parents who recognized themselves in the data above, and made changes that stuck.
“I was co-sleeping, feeding to sleep, and waking 5–10 times a night. Within weeks, my baby slept 5.5 hours without a feed.”
Alex
“Naps went from averaging 59 minutes to over 90. Night wake-ups dropped from 5 out of 8 nights to just 1.”
Lauren
“Three weeks in, night wake-ups dropped from 7+ to 2–3, and one night, zero. Naps nearly doubled.”
Aateqah
“We slept through the night 3 days in a row. My daughter went from needing me for every bedtime to letting Dad do it.”
Megan
If this data feels familiar, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Every baby is different, and so is the solution.
Get a personalized sleep plan for you and your baby
Take the 3-Min Quiz →How Does Your Area Compare?
Search for your country, state, or city, or click a country on the map, to see how local parents compare to the global average.
Data available for 50 countries, 255 regions, and 261 cities.
All Statistics at a Glance
Sample: 68,366 parents of children aged 0–6 years, surveyed July 2025 – May 2026 across 108 countries (US 27,728; UK 14,432; Australia 11,010; Canada 4,026; New Zealand 907; Germany 889; Italy 739; Netherlands 651; Spain 600; Singapore 561).
Parent sleep & wellbeing: 79% sleep less than 6 hours per night. 82% feel exhausted or drained. 73% report low energy “often”, 65% feel depleted “often”, 63% overwhelmed “often”, 57% use phone as escape “often”, 57% stressed/anxious “often”, 54% guilty “often”. 70% report “often” on 3 or more of these six wellbeing scales.
The Doomscrolling Guilt Cycle: Of parents who use their phone as escape “often” (57% of all): 71% feel guilty often (vs 19% for parents who almost never reach for their phone, +52 pp), 76% feel depleted often (vs 43%), 74% report self-care erosion (vs 62%). Based on 39,163 vs 7,031 parents.
The Village Effect: 75% of married-couple “just us” households feel distant from partner, vs 55% of households with extended-family help (-20 pp). Across every emotional measure, parents with extended family fare meaningfully better. Based on 61,489 vs 662 households.
Baby night waking by age (% who wake 3+ times per night): 0–3 months 48.5% (n=7,033); 4–6 months 65.6% (n=12,519); 7–9 months 67.3% (n=9,325, the peak); 10–12 months 60.5% (n=5,002); 13–18 months 53.5% (n=3,543); 19–24 months 40.6% (n=1,112); 2–6 years 30.8% (n=909).
Bedtime distribution: 7:00–7:59pm 39.0%; 8:00–8:59pm 23.0%; after 9pm 16.6%; 6:00–6:59pm 13.1%; varies 7.1%; before 6pm 1.1%. Among 0–3 month olds, 30% have bedtimes after 9pm.
Time to fall asleep: 30–59 min 25.0%; 10–19 min 20.9%; 20–29 min 17.8%; not sure 14.1%; over 60 min 11.9%; less than 10 min 10.2%.
Naps by age: 36% of 0–3 month olds take 4+ naps. 55% of 4–6 month olds settle into 3 naps. 65% of 7–11 month olds are on 2 naps. 65% of 12–23 month olds are on 1 nap. 63% of 2y+ still nap once; 24% have dropped naps entirely.
Sleep goals (multi-select): Reduce night wakeups 85%; end bedtime battles 40%; predictable routine 40%; improve naps 38%; stop early waking 29%.
How babies fall asleep (multi-select): Feeding 63%; rocking 60%; sitting nearby 42%; singing 33%; it depends 19%; falls asleep alone 10%.
How parents feel (single-select): Exhausted 46.8%; drained 35.3%; okay 17.1%; energized 0.7%.
Life areas affected by sleep deprivation (multi-select): Mood & patience 75%; self-care 70%; partner/family 70%; physical health 49%; enjoyment of life 33%; work focus 27%; friendships & social life 22%.
Day-to-day behaviors (multi-select): Feeling distant from partner 71%; struggling with daily tasks 67%; skipping things they enjoy 57%; eating cold meals 40%; cancelling plans 32%.
Free-text themes (from 25,630 written responses, 38% of all completers): Co-sleeping mentioned by 41%; contact napping by 26%; reflux by 15%. 71% of co-sleepers are exhausted or drained AND sleep less than 6 hours. 12% of those who wrote in mention both co-sleeping and contact naps. Babies with vs without reflux wake 3+ times at 58% vs 58% (no meaningful difference, challenging the assumption that reflux is the main driver of night waking).
The Co-Sleeping Catch-22: Co-sleepers’ babies wake 3+ times at 68% vs 56% for non-co-sleepers (+12 pp). They settle in under 10 minutes only 7.8% of the time vs 10.7% for non-co-sleepers, the trade for “easier settling” doesn’t materialize. Contact-nappers’ babies nap under 60 min at 62% vs 57% for others.
Segment differences: Single parents feel depleted “often” at 73% vs 65% for partnered parents (n=5,104 vs 61,489). Working full-time parents’ babies wake 3+ times less often than home full-time parents (50% vs 62%, n=10,740 vs 41,143), but bedtime and time-to-fall-asleep are nearly identical between cohorts. The difference is age composition: only 10% of working full-time parents have a 0–3-month-old vs 25% of home full-time parents.
Geographic coverage: 50 countries with sample of 30+ responses. 255 regions and 261 cities meet the same threshold. Top cities by sample: Sydney (3,846); Melbourne (2,350); London (2,190); Brisbane (1,674); Perth (1,237); New York (1,077); Chicago (952); Dallas (829); Adelaide (773); Atlanta (739); Toronto (685); Ashburn (633).
All percentages cite Betteroo State of Parent & Baby Sleep 2026 (n=68,366). Citations: please link to https://betteroo.ai/state-of-baby-sleep/