Infants differ in their ability to achieve organised sleep-wake behaviour. Difficulties in this developmental process are associated with problems falling asleep at bedtime and repeated night awakenings where parental assistance is needed to return to sleep. Studies have shown that a number of maternal psychosocial factors have been linked to differences in infant sleep outcome.
The primary aim of this study was to examine the relative contribution of maternal psychosocial factors including depression and anxiety symptoms, perceived past maternal parenting, maternal cognitions about infant sleep, maternal sleep history and the maternal settling strategy of active physical comforting to infant sleep outcome. A further aim was to explore the extent to which these variables affect infant sleep outcome through their link to maternal cognitions about infant sleep.