by Michelle Stein posted in Parenting

A study from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) has confirmed what most mothers already know to be true: Living with kids is exhausting.
Well, duh. But wait -- there's a twist.
This nationwide telephone survey of 5,805 people found that having children in the house typically meant less sleep and feeling tired more often -- for women, but not men. Participants answered questions about how long they slept (seven to nine hours being optimum and less than six hours insufficient) and how many days they felt tired in the past month. A number of other factors were considered as possibly contributing to sleep deprivation, including age, race, marital status, education, income, BMI, exercise, number of children, employment, and snoring. For the 2,908 women who were 45 or younger in the survey, the only factor associated with getting enough sleep was having kids in the house. Furthermore, each child increased the chances of getting insufficient sleep by almost 50 percent.
Here are a few more interesting tidbits from this study:
? Forty-eight percent of women who were younger than 45 and had children reported getting at least seven hours of sleep, compared to 62 percent of women without children.
? Aside from children, no other factors were linked to how long younger women slept.
? On average, younger women with children felt tired 14 days each month. This is compared to 11 days for younger women without children in the home.
? Having c...