Japanese Babies Sleep least -Why?

How would you react to a set of statistics that say Japanese babies sleep least - average 1.7 hours less than the longest-sleeping babies? The data show Japanese babies sleep 9.4 hours at night and 2.2 hours in daytime while the babies in New Zealand do 10.6 hours and 2.7 hours, respectively.

Interesting. It is often said Asian babies are lullabied to sleep by their mothers lying aside and babies in the west are placed in cribs to fall asleep on their own. Some researchers maintain that Asian babies tend to stay awake while their mothers are around and "want to stay up" till mothers fall asleep.

Here, we are talking about the so-called "skinship" and Asian mothers wonder why Western mothers object to that habit. Some argue that too much skinship hinders babies' "sense of self-help".

This episode introduces an MD and director of the Japanese Society of Sleep Research (JSSR), Prof. Kazuo Mishima and a gist of his contribution  to the Japanese version of the National Geographic.

Prof. Mishima has done a survey on the amount of sleep of Japanese  babies and discovered a substantial difference in comparison with other countries.

The survey on the sleeping habits of babies shows the percentages of bed-sharing by country are lower in UK (5%), New Zealand (6%), Australian (9%). Canada (12%), U.S.A. (15%), etc. and higher in Vietnam (83%), Thailand (77%), Indonesia (73%), India (71%), Japan (70%), South Korea (61%), etc.

A closer look at the data generally reveals that the longer the bed-sharing the shorter the nighttime sleep. Japanese babies are listed least in the amount of sleep because they sleep visibly less in daytime.

What does this lead to?

Prof. Mishima concludes "more sleep in daytime" should be prerequisite for the much-talked-about concept of "preschool education from nursery".

News Source: Nikkei Shimbun