Ultimately, we aim to conduct comparative studies on how parents experience and
manage Baby-Lag in different cultures and settings.
Discussion
New parents’tiredness and fatigue are difficult to measure. In this chapter, we have
reviewed objective measures of sleep, including polysomnography, actigraphy, and
others, which capture quantifiable data on sleep—such as sleep onset latency or
time in each sleep stage. These measures provide quantitative information that can
be used in statistical models. However, they do not adequately capture the expe-
rience of sleep deprivation and disruption that new parents encounter. Even tests
such as psychomotor vigilance measure consequences for functioning that are
somewhat remote from the tasks and undertakings of parents’day-to-day lives, and
therefore are difficult to relate to an understanding of Baby-Lag, although they may
make a useful contribution to understanding the functional consequences of sleep
disruption to adequate infant care-giving or safety-related activities such as driving.
Box 1 (continued)
- I rely on my partner to take care of tasks that I would ordinarily do
(a) Always
(b) Sometimes
(c) Rarely
(d) Never
(e) I am a single parent - I rely on others (friends, family, etc.) to take care of tasks that I
would ordinarily do
(a) Always
(b) Sometimes
(c) Rarely
(d) Never - I depend more than usual on emotional support from others
(a) Always
(b) Sometimes
(c) Rarely
(d) Never - I have trouble meeting deadlines at work or school
(a) Always
(b) Sometimes
(c) Rarely
(d) Never
(e) I am not in school or working
3 Baby-Lag: Methods for Assessing Parental Tiredness and Fatigue 43