Why Half of All Parents Co-Sleep — And Why Nobody Talks About It Honestly

There’s a conversation happening in almost every parenting household that almost nobody talks about publicly.

It happens at 2am when a toddler appears at the bedroom door. It happens during a feed that goes longer than expected. It happens when a parent slides onto the floor mattress beside their child because it’s 3am and nobody has the energy for anything else.

Co-sleeping.

New data from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine reveals that half of all parents co-sleep with their child — yet it remains one of the most quietly judged parenting choices in modern culture. Parents do it, but many feel like they shouldn’t admit it.

At Little Willows, we think that needs to change. Not because we’re telling you what to do — but because the science behind co-sleeping and co-regulation is genuinely fascinating, and most parents deserve to make this decision with real information rather than guilt.

What Co-Regulation Actually Means

Co-regulation is the process by which a parent’s calm, regulated nervous system helps a child’s immature nervous system learn to regulate itself. It’s not a parenting philosophy — it’s a neurological reality.

The proximity of a parent may help the infant’s immature nervous system learn to self-regulate during sleep. Studies show that infants who sleep near their parents have more stable temperatures, regular heart rhythms, and fewer long pauses in breathing compared to babies who sleep alone.

In simple terms — your presence physically regulates your child’s body. Their nervous system borrows from yours until it’s mature enough to manage on its own. That’s not attachment parenting ideology, that’s biology.

What the Research Actually Shows

The science on co-sleeping is more nuanced — and more positive — than the mainstream conversation suggests.

From a biological evolutionary perspective, co-sleeping is essential for child protection and development and beneficial in encouraging parent-child bonding, and promoting secure attachment into toddlerhood.

Co-sleeping babies grow up with higher self-esteem, less anxiety, become independent sooner, are better behaved in school, and are more comfortable with affection.

And perhaps most surprisingly — worldwide research shows that the SIDS rate is lowest in countries where co-sleeping is the norm rather than the exception.

None of this means co-sleeping is right for every family. But it does mean the reflexive judgment that co-sleeping is somehow harmful or creating dependency isn’t supported by the weight of current evidence.

The Honest Complexity

We want to be straightforward here because we think parents deserve honesty rather than one-sided cheerleading.

Mothers co-sleeping with toddlers can lose sleep and report more stress, anxiety, and depression — which indirectly affects children through less sensitive parenting.

Co-sleeping that happens reactively — because it’s the only way anyone gets any sleep — is different from co-sleeping that’s intentional and designed around everyone’s comfort and safety. The research distinguishes between these, and so should any honest conversation about it.

The question worth asking isn’t “is co-sleeping good or bad?” It’s “is this arrangement working for our family, and is it as safe as it can possibly be?”

The Safety Question — Where the Floor Bed Changes Everything

This is where Little Willows enters the conversation — not as a co-sleeping endorsement, but as a safer option for the families who are already doing it.

The most significant safety concern with co-sleeping on a raised adult bed isn’t the co-sleeping itself — it’s the surface. A standard adult mattress is soft, deep, and surrounded by pillows and bedding that pose genuine risks for young children. The height creates fall risk. The softness creates suffocation risk.

A floor bed at 22 centimetres from the ground, with a firm foam mattress, no surrounding pillows or adult bedding, and soft foam rails rather than hard wooden frames — addresses every one of those concerns simultaneously.

Parents who co-sleep on a Little Willows floor bed aren’t on an adult mattress surrounded by adult bedding. They’re on a firm, low, purpose-built surface with soft edges and no fall risk. That’s a meaningfully different safety profile — not perfect, because no sleep arrangement is — but genuinely better than the alternative most co-sleeping parents are currently using.

This is actually how Tammie and I use our own bed. It was never just about Willow sleeping independently. It was about having a surface we could be on together — safely, comfortably, at floor level — without the anxiety of a raised mattress with hard edges and a significant drop to a hard floor.

The Transition Question

One of the things we hear most from parents is that co-sleeping happened by accident — and now they don’t know how to transition their toddler to independent sleep without it feeling like abandonment.

A floor bed actually helps with this transition more than any other sleep surface — because it gives the child ownership of a space that feels safe and accessible. They can get in and out independently. They can come to your room if they need to, and return to their own bed without needing to be lifted. The independence the floor bed creates isn’t in opposition to co-sleeping — it’s the natural next step that makes the transition possible without tears.

Willow still comes into our room sometimes. And sometimes one of us ends up on her floor bed with her. The difference is that both arrangements feel safe, intentional, and easy — rather than anxious, reactive, and exhausting.

A Note From Us

We built Little Willows because of a fall. But we kept building it because of everything we learned along the way about how toddlers actually sleep, develop, and connect with their parents. Co-sleeping and co-regulation are part of that story — not something to be ashamed of, and not something to do recklessly either.

Whatever arrangement works for your family, we hope this gives you a little more confidence that you’re not doing it wrong.

From our family to yours — Matt, Tammie & Willow 🌿

Sources

•        New data reveals that half of parents co-sleep with their child, American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2025

•        Sources of attitudes towards parent-child co-sleeping and their effects: A systematic scoping review, Family Process/PMC, 2024

•        7 Psychological Effects of Child Sleeping with Parents, Mind Care Counselling, 2024

•        The Benefits of Co-Sleeping, Healthy Child/Dr Sears

•        Using complexity science to understand the role of co-sleeping in mother-infant co-regulatory processes, ScienceDirect, 2022