Mazandarani Amir Ali, Zare Bahramadbadi Mahdi
Department of Behavioral Sciences, The Institute for Research and Development in the Humanities (SAMT), Tehran, Iran.
Counseling Department, AllamehTabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran.
Behav Sleep Med. 2025 Jul-Aug;23(4):515-525. doi: 10.1080/15402002.2025.2483961. Epub 2025 Mar 24.
This study investigates the moderating effects of maternal self-efficacy on the association between infant sleep quality and various aspects of maternal mental and emotional health.
Five hundred forty-four mothers (M age = 32.27, SD = 4.29) of infants and toddlers aged 0 to 36 months completed a combination of self-report and parent-report measures: the Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire-Revised (BISQ-R) for infant sleep quality, the Maternal Self-Efficacy Scale (MSES), the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21), the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), and the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS).
Mothers with higher self-efficacy reported better well-being across all domains compared to those with lower self-efficacy. Furthermore, maternal self-efficacy scores were found to moderate the relationship between infant sleep and maternal well-being. While poor infant sleep quality was associated with lower well-being scores across all mothers, the positive association between good infant sleep quality and well-being was more pronounced among mothers with higher self-efficacy scores.
Our findings highlight the moderating role of maternal self-efficacy in the relationship between maternal well-being and infant/toddler sleep. These results suggest that interventions for enhancing maternal self-efficacy may offer a promising avenue for improving maternal well-being, potentially in conjunction with behavioral interventions targeting child sleep problems.
