How Much Sleep Do New Parents Get? Mom vs Dad Data

New parents typically sleep around 6.5 to 7 hours a night in the first months, according to wrist-tracker and sleep-diary studies.

That number hides the real story. Mothers are woken almost twice as often as fathers, and broken sleep can feel like far less sleep than the clock says.

We pulled together 9 peer-reviewed studies and 1 industry survey, covering more than 35,000 parents, to answer the questions parents keep asking: how much sleep is normal, who actually gets up at night, and how long it lasts.

How Much Sleep Do New Parents Actually Get?

The honest answer depends on how you measure it.

Studies that track parents objectively, with wrist actigraphy or daily sleep diaries, land in a surprisingly narrow range.

Notice the gap between the first three rows and the last one.

When parents are measured, they sleep around 6.5 hours. When they are asked, most say 4 hours or less.

That is not parents exaggerating. The difference is what the sleep feels like, which the next sections explain.

One more surprise in the tracker data: fathers often sleep slightly shorter than mothers. The Horwitz team summed it up this way: “Mothers showed more impaired sleep quality than fathers, at all assessments, whereas fathers had shorter sleep duration.”

So the mom vs dad gap is not mainly about hours. It is about interruptions.

Who Gets Up With the Baby at Night: Moms or Dads?

Across every study we found, the answer is the same: mostly mom.

The largest recent dataset comes from France. Breton and colleagues (2025) asked parents of 1,409 children aged 6 months to 5 years who handles the child at night.

In 64% of families it was the mother alone. In 6% it was the father alone.

Among 882 children referred to a clinic for sleep problems, the split was nearly identical: 60% mother only, 9% father only.

A telling detail: in the clinical group, 98% of the sleep questionnaires were filled out by mothers. Even the paperwork about night care falls to mom.

The pattern holds in the US. Sociologist Sarah Burgard analyzed time diaries from about 20,000 working parents in the American Time Use Survey, published in Social Forces (2011).

Among dual-earner couples with a baby under 1, 32% of mothers reported getting up at night to care for the child, compared with 11% of fathers.

Mothers’ interruptions also lasted longer: about 44 minutes on average, compared with about 30 minutes for fathers.

Burgard’s key finding was that the gap held even after accounting for employment. Working mothers were still about 2.5 times as likely as working fathers to get up at night.

And then there is the uncomfortable one. In the 2014 Chicco survey, 38% of dads admitted pretending to be asleep to avoid a night feeding, and 91% of moms said they handled most late-night feeds.

That survey was run in-house by a baby-products brand, so treat it as a snapshot rather than science. It still says something that more than a third of fathers were willing to admit it.

The Real Gap Is Interruptions, Not Hours

This is the part most articles on new parent sleep miss.

In the Horwitz study, the two parents’ total sleep differed by only about 13 minutes at 4 months. Their night wakings differed by almost double: 3.3 for mothers vs 1.75 for fathers, by diary.

A study of 60 working couples with preschoolers found the same shape. Härdelin et al. (2021) measured mothers sleeping 28 minutes longer than fathers, yet mothers reported 2.6 awakenings a night vs 1.6 and rated their sleep quality lower.

Why does that matter so much? Because fragmented sleep is not a milder version of short sleep. It can hit just as hard.

In a Tel Aviv University experiment with 61 healthy young adults, Kahn et al. (2014) woke one group four times during 8 hours in bed, for about 15 minutes each time.

The next day, their attention and mood looked the same as the group allowed only 4 hours of sleep.

It was a small pilot study with young adults, not parents. But it offers a likely explanation for the survey vs tracker puzzle above: a mother woken three or four times can spend 7 hours asleep and still feel, and function, like she got 4.

How Long Does Postpartum Sleep Deprivation Last?

Longer than anyone warns you.

The most comprehensive answer comes from a German panel study. Richter et al. (2019), published in the journal SLEEP, followed 4,659 parents who had a baby between 2008 and 2015, asking about their sleep every year.

First-time parents were hit harder than experienced ones.

Higher household income did not protect parents’ sleep, and neither did having a partner in the home compared with parenting alone.

Lead researcher Sakari Lemola put it plainly: women experience more sleep disruption after a birth “reflecting that mothers are still more often in the role of the primary caregiver” (EurekAlert, 2019).

The good news: the steepest drop is in the first months. Wakings fall sharply after the first year, as the Burgard numbers show.

Why Does Mom End Up on Night Duty?

The easy explanation is breastfeeding. The research says it is only part of the story.

Breastfeeding does anchor some feeds to mom. But a study of 133 first-time mothers and fathers found that parents of babies breastfed in the evening or at night slept 40 to 45 minutes more than parents who used formula at night (Doan et al., 2007).

In other words, bottles are not an automatic fix, and breastfeeding is not a reason the other parent can’t help.

Feeding is also only one of the night jobs. Diapers, settling, sick nights, bad dreams and 5 a.m. wake-ups don’t require a breast.

Burgard found the gap persisted after controlling for work hours, so “he has work tomorrow” doesn’t fully explain it either. Every parent in that sample had a job.

What remains is the pattern researchers keep describing: mom becomes the default responder. She often hears the baby first because she is the one listening.

That is the night-time version of being the default parent, and it rarely changes without a direct conversation.

Paternity leave helps too. Studies from Quebec and Germany show what changes when dads get real solo time early on, including at night.

What Unequal Nights Cost Mothers

Broken sleep is not just tiring. It is one of the clearest risk factors for postpartum mood problems.

In a study of 112 couples, Goyal, Gay and Lee (2009) found that mothers who slept less than 4 hours between midnight and 6 a.m., or napped less than an hour during the day, were at higher risk of depression at 3 months postpartum.

The baby’s temperament explained less than 1% of the difference once sleep was accounted for. The mother’s sleep mattered far more than how “difficult” the baby was.

The French study adds the relationship side. Greater maternal night involvement was linked with more psychological distress and lower relationship satisfaction.

Sharing the nights was linked with the absence of insomnia, while mother-only care was mostly linked with its presence.

If you are running on broken sleep and feel short-fused, numb or constantly on edge, that is not a character flaw. It is a known pattern: see the signs of mom burnout, why mom rage often follows exhaustion, and what it means to be an overstimulated mom.

If low mood lasts more than two weeks after birth, or you have thoughts of harming yourself, contact your doctor or Postpartum Support International.

How to Split Night Shifts With a Newborn

The goal is not a perfect 50/50 of every waking. It is making sure both parents get one solid block of sleep.

The Goyal findings point to a practical target: protect at least one stretch of 4 or more hours of sleep for the parent doing most of the night care, ideally between midnight and 6 a.m.

Here are four setups that work, and who each one suits.

A few rules make any of these stick:

1. Decide before 9 p.m., not at 3 a.m. Nobody negotiates well half-asleep.
2. The off-duty parent is truly off. Separate room, earplugs, phone on silent. Otherwise she wakes anyway.
3. The on-duty parent doesn’t hand back. “I tried, she wants you” is how the old pattern returns.
4. Daytime naps count. The parent with the rougher night gets the first nap on the weekend.
5. Review it every two weeks. Babies change fast, and so should the plan.

How to Bring It Up With Your Partner

Many partners don’t realize how uneven the nights are. If they are sleeping through it, that is exactly why.

Lead with the data, not the scorecard: “Research shows broken sleep hits like getting only 4 hours. I need one protected block a night.”

Then propose a specific setup from the table instead of asking for “more help.”

If past conversations about sharing the load have gone badly, these guides can help: how to talk to your husband about chores and how to ask for help without nagging.

It also helps to treat the night shift like any other household task with a named owner. In RemindHer, every task is assigned to a specific person, so “tonight’s 2 a.m. feed” has one clear owner instead of defaulting to whoever wakes first.

Night duty is part of the wider mental load that mothers carry. Our survey of 93 mothers found that 69% most often forget something for themselves first, and sleep is usually the first thing to go.

How We Built This Research Roundup

We searched for peer-reviewed studies that measured parents’ sleep or night-time care after a birth, prioritizing large samples, studies that compared mothers and fathers directly, and objective measurement where available.

Every number on this page links to, or is listed with, its original source. We read the papers or official press releases ourselves rather than relying on other articles’ summaries.

Limitations are worth stating clearly. Most studies involve heterosexual two-parent households, several rely on self-report, and the largest US time-diary data (Burgard) was collected in 2003 to 2007.

The Chicco survey is industry research, not peer-reviewed, and is labeled as such.

FAQ

How much sleep do new parents get?

In tracker and sleep-diary studies, new parents average roughly 6.5 to 7 hours a night in the first year. That sleep is broken into pieces, which is why most parents feel they get 4 to 5 hours.

Do moms or dads lose more sleep after a baby?

Mothers do. German panel data shows mothers lose about 1 hour a night in the first 3 months, while fathers lose about 15 minutes. Mothers are also woken almost twice as often.

How many times a night do new parents wake up?

At 4 months postpartum, mothers reported about 3.3 night wakings and fathers about 1.75 in a 2023 study of 232 couples. A 2025 meta-analysis put fathers’ average at about 1.1 awakenings a night.

How long does sleep deprivation last after having a baby?

The worst of it is in the first 3 to 12 months. But research following 4,659 parents found sleep was still about 20 minutes shorter for mothers and 15 minutes shorter for fathers 4 to 6 years after the birth.

Is interrupted sleep as bad as not sleeping enough?

It can be. In a Tel Aviv University experiment, four wake-ups across an 8-hour night affected attention and mood as much as sleeping only 4 hours.

Does breastfeeding mean mom has to do all the night wakings?

No. In one study, breastfeeding families slept 40 to 45 minutes more than families using formula at night, and the partner can still take diapers, burping, resettling or one bottle of pumped milk.

Is it normal that my husband sleeps through the baby crying?

It is very common. Studies consistently find mothers respond to most night wakings, so the partner who is never on duty has little reason to wake. A clear shift schedule fixes it faster than waiting for him to hear the baby.

The Bottom Line

New parents do get sleep, about 6.5 hours of it. What they don’t get is unbroken sleep, and that burden falls mostly on mothers.

Moms are woken nearly twice as often, handle night care alone in about two-thirds of families, and lose up to four times as much sleep in the first months.

The fix is not heroic. Pick a shift setup, protect one solid block of sleep for each parent, and give every night job a clear owner.

Sources

1. Horwitz, A. et al. (2023). Sleep of mothers, fathers, and infants: a longitudinal study from pregnancy through 12 months. SLEEP, 46(9). Link
2. Breton, A. et al. (2025). Gender Inequality in Managing Childhood Sleep: Which Parent Gets up at Night? Children, 12(4), 491. Link
3. Richter, D., Krämer, M. D., Tang, N. K. Y., Montgomery-Downs, H. E., & Lemola, S. (2019). Long-term effects of pregnancy and childbirth on sleep satisfaction and duration of first-time and experienced mothers and fathers. SLEEP, 42(4). Link
4. Burgard, S. A. (2011). The Needs of Others: Gender and Sleep Interruptions for Caregivers. Social Forces, 89(4), 1189 to 1215. Link
5. Fathers’ sleep in the first 24 months postpartum: A systematic review and meta-analysis of global data (2025). Sleep Health. Link
6. Härdelin, H. et al. (2021). Do Mothers Have Worse Sleep Than Fathers? Sleep Imbalance, Parental Stress, and Relationship Satisfaction in Working Parents. Nature and Science of Sleep. Link
7. Kahn, M., Fridenson, S., Lerer, R., Bar-Haim, Y., & Sadeh, A. (2014). Effects of one night of induced night-wakings versus sleep restriction on sustained attention and mood: a pilot study. Sleep Medicine, 15, 825 to 832. Link
8. Goyal, D., Gay, C., & Lee, K. (2009). Fragmented maternal sleep is more strongly correlated with depressive symptoms than infant temperament at three months postpartum. Archives of Women’s Mental Health. Link
9. Doan, T., Gardiner, A., Gay, C. L., & Lee, K. A. (2007). Breast-feeding Increases Sleep Duration of New Parents. Journal of Perinatal & Neonatal Nursing. Link
10. Chicco USA (2014). Late Night Feeding Survey, 1,060 parents (industry survey, not peer-reviewed). Link