By Uyen T.
Every year, August 15-21 is recognized as National Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Breastfeeding Week! The theme for 2026 is “Better Data, Better Care for AANHPI Families“.
This week, the New Beginnings blog highlights cultural sleep practices among families with young children from East and Southeast Asian cultures. We asked a group of parents a few questions about their experiences regarding sleep customs in Asian American families in the US. Their responses follow.
Anonymous parent
I was born and raised in Japan. My mother is half White American and half Japanese. My early childhood sleep experience was shaped by a very Western-style approach. In infancy, I slept in my own room, completely separate from my parents’ bedroom. While this was the norm in my household, I remember feeling a strong sense of loneliness as a child. Looking back, I can still recall moments of sadness and a tendency toward negative thoughts, even at a very young age. I believe this was influenced not only by the sleeping arrangement itself, but also by my personal temperament.
When I became a parent, I initially prepared a crib for my own child. However, it was not used extensively. At the time, we were living in a small condominium, so we adapted our sleeping setup to what felt most practical and comforting for everyone. We placed a single bed next to our bed and slept together as a family. Bedsharing and nighttime routines felt significantly easier and more natural in this arrangement.
As time went on, we shifted our arrangement so that the baby slept in the bed in our room, with us on our own bed.
After the birth of our second child, our family of four continued to sleep together. By then, we had moved into a new home and transitioned to a Japanese-style setup, laying futons side by side on the floor. This allowed all four of us to sleep together comfortably and safely.
We were living in Hawaii during this period, and many of my close friends were Japanese mothers who also followed similar sleep arrangements. Because of this shared cultural environment, I never felt judged or pressured by differing expectations or parenting opinions. Instead, I felt supported and grateful.
Looking back, I have no regrets about our choices. I believe that sharing our sleep space during those early years contributed positively to both my children’s emotional stability and my own mental well-being. Those years felt peaceful and deeply connected.
As my children grew, their needs naturally changed. Now that my children are in elementary school, they sleep independently in their own room. This transition happened gradually and by their own choice, which felt like the right timing for our family.
Even while living in the United States, I chose an approach that felt right for my family, rather than strictly following one cultural norm. Every child is different, and parenting decisions are never one-size-fits-all. For my child, this experience worked well. Today, they are able to fall asleep independently within a few minutes, which reflects a healthy and smooth transition.
Uyen
I grew up in Vietnam, where my parents, my older brother, and I shared a family bed for several years. When we stayed at our grandparents’ home, we shared the bed with our grandma, too. I fondly remember the humid summer days lying next to her, often dozing off while still fanning us with her bamboo fan to keep us cool.
Until I had my first baby, sleep was never something I thought much about. We prepared a cozy crib in a nursery next to our bedroom, nicely decorated and ready for her arrival. Then she arrived with her own plans for us.
For the first few years with our first baby, we averaged just a few hours of sleep a night, with her in a crib in the corner of our bedroom. Desperate for sleep, we went through a horrendous stretch of “sleep training,” recommended by a few co-workers and Google. We followed all the techniques and still couldn’t understand what we had done wrong. We learned to accept that being a parent simply meant very little sleep. So many nights, instead of holding her close, we stayed up having long talks with her about why she needed to go back to her own bed.
Then came our second baby, and we braced ourselves to never sleep again. But a small miracle happened the night I brought our older one, then four years old, into our bed, because we desperately needed sleep, and it just suddenly felt right. After taking safety measures, our bed gradually expanded into a family bed, where I would later lie awake some nights, soaking in the quiet, listening to my family breathing in deep sleep. I thought about sleeping near my own parents and siblings growing up, about my new family, and about being together even while asleep. I had never felt such ease. That realization came with regret as well, for the years we had lost with our firstborn, fighting for sleep every night.
As a second-time parent, I finally let myself tune out the noise and listen to my own intuition. Our home had three bedrooms, but sending the kids off to sleep alone wouldn’t have felt right. Having my baby beside me to nurse through the night meant fewer trips around the room and house and made it so much easier to fall back asleep. Bedtime got simpler, too. I would just lie down, read a book with both kids tucked in beside me, and drift off together.
As a young parent, I felt caught between our family’s habits and the Western way of doing things. Talking with other parents about sleeping arrangements often left me feeling judged, especially with families outside Asian backgrounds. Questions like “Are you working on moving them out of your bed?” always made me uneasy. It took years to reach a place where I could trust my own instincts, even as what felt right kept changing and evolving. Eventually, I could say with ease that we were simply savoring these fleeting years of closeness with our children, even during sleep.
Looking back, I had blamed myself entirely for choices made during such a critical stage, even when I had sensed something was wrong and tried to fix it. In time, I realized it was never really a choice at all, not when we lacked the information, the knowledge, the options. All we had then was a handful of well-meaning but poor advice. What we actually needed was meaningful, practical support from family, community, workplace, and policy – support that honored the physical and emotional well-being, nourishment, and bonding of mother, child, and family as a whole.
If I could go back and tell myself one thing before my first baby, it would be to trust your instincts and find the right support. Places like La Leche League are a good place to start.
Stephanie
My Mom is from Indonesia, she came to the U.S. in her twenties. My Dad’s family came from Hong Kong, and they arrived in the U.S. when he was just a newborn. When I was a newborn, my parents had me in a crib, and then in my own bed as I grew up. We never bed-shared. Oddly, I did the same thing with my child when he was little, but it was an independent decision on my part.
Before I became a parent, I didn’t plan to bed-share with my baby. I am a very light sleeper, so I was worried that having the baby right next to me in bed would likely mean more frequent waking on my part. I had also heard about how bed-sharing can sometimes lead to children wanting their parents nearby for longer in order to fall asleep. This helped confirm that a separate sleep space was the right fit for our family.
When we had our first baby, we figured out pretty quickly what worked for us. We had him in a bassinet in our bedroom, located at the end of the bed. It worked well because we were able to attend to his needs quickly. Eventually, he moved into a crib in his own room, and the transition was very smooth.
We went into it thinking that we would take shifts on who would attend to the baby. When he stirred in the bassinet in our room, one of us would attend to him and take him to his room for feedings and diaper changes, then bring him back to our bedroom where the bassinet was. Once he was old enough and sleeping in his own crib, we would simply roll out of bed and head over to his room to attend to him. It seemed to work out well for us!
My family wasn’t very traditional, and I grew up very Westernized. Our decision not to share a bed was solely our personal preference—there was no pressure from any family members.
Our doctors have always supported our decision to have our baby sleep independently, since everyone was sleeping well. They were actually impressed at how well our baby slept and how adaptable he was to sleeping in different situations.
When our son was around 4 years old, he started waking up midway through the night, a little scared at times, possibly due to night terrors. I noticed it was easier to console him by bringing him into our bed and letting him fall back asleep there with us. His night terrors have since stopped, and nowadays we just let him decide whether he wants to sleep in our bed or not.
We’re happy with how it all turned out, since our son has slept pretty well overall. Now that he’s 5 years old, sometimes, he chooses to sleep with us in our bed, and we welcome it because we love the snuggles! Other times, he prefers his own bed. It will all work out no matter what. Your family bonding and attachment go beyond bedtime arrangement.
Elise
As an American-born Chinese, I had the privilege of growing up in an immigrant, multigenerational household. My grandmother was the matriarch of the family and the person my mom turned to whenever she needed advice. Whether it was about cooking, raising kids, or some mysterious homemade remedy, Grandma usually had an answer.
For as long as I can remember, bedtime was never a solo activity. While I always had my own bedroom, my parents and I bedshared for most of my childhood, and honestly, I never thought much about it. It was just normal to me. At night, I knew there was always someone nearby. It was my source of comfort, security, and connection.
When I became a mom, my husband and I did everything we could to prepare. We bought the stroller, the baby monitor, and all the gear we thought we would need. We were gifted a beautiful crib that we fully intended to use, carefully placing it in the corner of our room where we thought it looked best. In our minds, everything was ready, and our baby would sleep peacefully in the crib. Then our firstborn arrived, and we quickly learned that babies don’t always follow the plans we make for them. I remember in the early days, our baby would not sleep more than twenty minutes at a time in the crib, and I was getting desperate for answers. I read countless articles, downloaded apps, and tracked every feeding, nap, and minute of sleep. Having all that information gave me a false sense of confidence. I thought that if I could just collect enough data or find the right answer, I would finally feel like I knew what I was doing. Instead, I often ended up feeling more confused than when I started.
I knew something had to change. I remember wondering how my mom and grandma did this without sleep trackers, baby monitors, or wake window calculators. Somehow, they figured it out. So, I started to trust my intuition. We moved the crib next to our bed, and eventually, our baby slept in bed with us. The stretches of sleep became longer, and I began to feel more in tune with my baby’s needs and natural rhythms. It felt natural and familiar. Without even realizing it, I had found my way back to the same sense of closeness and comfort I had grown up with.
By the time our second baby arrived, I felt much more confident. I spent less time worrying about doing things the “right” way and trusted what worked for our family. Looking back, I’m glad I learned to trust my intuition. It gave me a sense of peace that no app or technology could ever replace. My kids now sleep in their own bedroom, but every once in a while, they still find their way into our bed. And when they do, I hope being close to us gives them the same comfort and security I felt growing up.
Like families in any other culture, East and Southeast Asian families around the world and in the U.S. have varied approaches to sleep and bedtime routines. This is an aspect of parenting we don’t always discuss, even though sleep is an essential part of life and survival and takes up a significant portion of our day. Do we rely on science, follow our cultural practices, or simply act on instinct when it comes to sleep<hr ?
The AANHPI Breastfeeding Week theme for 2026 is “Better Data, Better Care for AANHPI Families”. The AANHPI Lactation Collaborative invites you to stay tuned to find out more about what they are planning and join in this breastfeeding week to explore why data equity matters and ways we can address those gaps. Helpful resources for staying connected with the AANHPI Lactation Collaborative:
La Leche League resources for safe infant sleep:
Supporting Breastfeeding Families–Today, Tomorrow, Always
Please consider donating to La Leche League USA.
Your gift helps support this blog and the website!
Donations of any amount are gratefully accepted. Thank you!
Follow us on:
Leave a Comment
Posted: August 11, 2026 by Yael Breimer
Sleep in Asian American Families in the US: AANHPI Breastfeeding Week
By Uyen T.
Every year, August 15-21 is recognized as National Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Breastfeeding Week! The theme for 2026 is “Better Data, Better Care for AANHPI Families“.
This week, the New Beginnings blog highlights cultural sleep practices among families with young children from East and Southeast Asian cultures. We asked a group of parents a few questions about their experiences regarding sleep customs in Asian American families in the US. Their responses follow.
Anonymous parent
I was born and raised in Japan. My mother is half White American and half Japanese. My early childhood sleep experience was shaped by a very Western-style approach. In infancy, I slept in my own room, completely separate from my parents’ bedroom. While this was the norm in my household, I remember feeling a strong sense of loneliness as a child. Looking back, I can still recall moments of sadness and a tendency toward negative thoughts, even at a very young age. I believe this was influenced not only by the sleeping arrangement itself, but also by my personal temperament.
When I became a parent, I initially prepared a crib for my own child. However, it was not used extensively. At the time, we were living in a small condominium, so we adapted our sleeping setup to what felt most practical and comforting for everyone. We placed a single bed next to our bed and slept together as a family. Bedsharing and nighttime routines felt significantly easier and more natural in this arrangement.
As time went on, we shifted our arrangement so that the baby slept in the bed in our room, with us on our own bed.
After the birth of our second child, our family of four continued to sleep together. By then, we had moved into a new home and transitioned to a Japanese-style setup, laying futons side by side on the floor. This allowed all four of us to sleep together comfortably and safely.
We were living in Hawaii during this period, and many of my close friends were Japanese mothers who also followed similar sleep arrangements. Because of this shared cultural environment, I never felt judged or pressured by differing expectations or parenting opinions. Instead, I felt supported and grateful.
Looking back, I have no regrets about our choices. I believe that sharing our sleep space during those early years contributed positively to both my children’s emotional stability and my own mental well-being. Those years felt peaceful and deeply connected.
As my children grew, their needs naturally changed. Now that my children are in elementary school, they sleep independently in their own room. This transition happened gradually and by their own choice, which felt like the right timing for our family.
Even while living in the United States, I chose an approach that felt right for my family, rather than strictly following one cultural norm. Every child is different, and parenting decisions are never one-size-fits-all. For my child, this experience worked well. Today, they are able to fall asleep independently within a few minutes, which reflects a healthy and smooth transition.
I grew up in Vietnam, where my parents, my older brother, and I shared a family bed for several years. When we stayed at our grandparents’ home, we shared the bed with our grandma, too. I fondly remember the humid summer days lying next to her, often dozing off while still fanning us with her bamboo fan to keep us cool.
Until I had my first baby, sleep was never something I thought much about. We prepared a cozy crib in a nursery next to our bedroom, nicely decorated and ready for her arrival. Then she arrived with her own plans for us.
For the first few years with our first baby, we averaged just a few hours of sleep a night, with her in a crib in the corner of our bedroom. Desperate for sleep, we went through a horrendous stretch of “sleep training,” recommended by a few co-workers and Google. We followed all the techniques and still couldn’t understand what we had done wrong. We learned to accept that being a parent simply meant very little sleep. So many nights, instead of holding her close, we stayed up having long talks with her about why she needed to go back to her own bed.
Then came our second baby, and we braced ourselves to never sleep again. But a small miracle happened the night I brought our older one, then four years old, into our bed, because we desperately needed sleep, and it just suddenly felt right. After taking safety measures, our bed gradually expanded into a family bed, where I would later lie awake some nights, soaking in the quiet, listening to my family breathing in deep sleep. I thought about sleeping near my own parents and siblings growing up, about my new family, and about being together even while asleep. I had never felt such ease. That realization came with regret as well, for the years we had lost with our firstborn, fighting for sleep every night.
As a second-time parent, I finally let myself tune out the noise and listen to my own intuition. Our home had three bedrooms, but sending the kids off to sleep alone wouldn’t have felt right. Having my baby beside me to nurse through the night meant fewer trips around the room and house and made it so much easier to fall back asleep. Bedtime got simpler, too. I would just lie down, read a book with both kids tucked in beside me, and drift off together.
As a young parent, I felt caught between our family’s habits and the Western way of doing things. Talking with other parents about sleeping arrangements often left me feeling judged, especially with families outside Asian backgrounds. Questions like “Are you working on moving them out of your bed?” always made me uneasy. It took years to reach a place where I could trust my own instincts, even as what felt right kept changing and evolving. Eventually, I could say with ease that we were simply savoring these fleeting years of closeness with our children, even during sleep.
Looking back, I had blamed myself entirely for choices made during such a critical stage, even when I had sensed something was wrong and tried to fix it. In time, I realized it was never really a choice at all, not when we lacked the information, the knowledge, the options. All we had then was a handful of well-meaning but poor advice. What we actually needed was meaningful, practical support from family, community, workplace, and policy – support that honored the physical and emotional well-being, nourishment, and bonding of mother, child, and family as a whole.
If I could go back and tell myself one thing before my first baby, it would be to trust your instincts and find the right support. Places like La Leche League are a good place to start.
Stephanie
My Mom is from Indonesia, she came to the U.S. in her twenties. My Dad’s family came from Hong Kong, and they arrived in the U.S. when he was just a newborn. When I was a newborn, my parents had me in a crib, and then in my own bed as I grew up. We never bed-shared. Oddly, I did the same thing with my child when he was little, but it was an independent decision on my part.
Before I became a parent, I didn’t plan to bed-share with my baby. I am a very light sleeper, so I was worried that having the baby right next to me in bed would likely mean more frequent waking on my part. I had also heard about how bed-sharing can sometimes lead to children wanting their parents nearby for longer in order to fall asleep. This helped confirm that a separate sleep space was the right fit for our family.
When we had our first baby, we figured out pretty quickly what worked for us. We had him in a bassinet in our bedroom, located at the end of the bed. It worked well because we were able to attend to his needs quickly. Eventually, he moved into a crib in his own room, and the transition was very smooth.
We went into it thinking that we would take shifts on who would attend to the baby. When he stirred in the bassinet in our room, one of us would attend to him and take him to his room for feedings and diaper changes, then bring him back to our bedroom where the bassinet was. Once he was old enough and sleeping in his own crib, we would simply roll out of bed and head over to his room to attend to him. It seemed to work out well for us!
My family wasn’t very traditional, and I grew up very Westernized. Our decision not to share a bed was solely our personal preference—there was no pressure from any family members.
Our doctors have always supported our decision to have our baby sleep independently, since everyone was sleeping well. They were actually impressed at how well our baby slept and how adaptable he was to sleeping in different situations.
When our son was around 4 years old, he started waking up midway through the night, a little scared at times, possibly due to night terrors. I noticed it was easier to console him by bringing him into our bed and letting him fall back asleep there with us. His night terrors have since stopped, and nowadays we just let him decide whether he wants to sleep in our bed or not.
We’re happy with how it all turned out, since our son has slept pretty well overall. Now that he’s 5 years old, sometimes, he chooses to sleep with us in our bed, and we welcome it because we love the snuggles! Other times, he prefers his own bed. It will all work out no matter what. Your family bonding and attachment go beyond bedtime arrangement.
Elise
As an American-born Chinese, I had the privilege of growing up in an immigrant, multigenerational household. My grandmother was the matriarch of the family and the person my mom turned to whenever she needed advice. Whether it was about cooking, raising kids, or some mysterious homemade remedy, Grandma usually had an answer.
For as long as I can remember, bedtime was never a solo activity. While I always had my own bedroom, my parents and I bedshared for most of my childhood, and honestly, I never thought much about it. It was just normal to me. At night, I knew there was always someone nearby. It was my source of comfort, security, and connection.
When I became a mom, my husband and I did everything we could to prepare. We bought the stroller, the baby monitor, and all the gear we thought we would need. We were gifted a beautiful crib that we fully intended to use, carefully placing it in the corner of our room where we thought it looked best. In our minds, everything was ready, and our baby would sleep peacefully in the crib. Then our firstborn arrived, and we quickly learned that babies don’t always follow the plans we make for them. I remember in the early days, our baby would not sleep more than twenty minutes at a time in the crib, and I was getting desperate for answers. I read countless articles, downloaded apps, and tracked every feeding, nap, and minute of sleep. Having all that information gave me a false sense of confidence. I thought that if I could just collect enough data or find the right answer, I would finally feel like I knew what I was doing. Instead, I often ended up feeling more confused than when I started.
I knew something had to change. I remember wondering how my mom and grandma did this without sleep trackers, baby monitors, or wake window calculators. Somehow, they figured it out. So, I started to trust my intuition. We moved the crib next to our bed, and eventually, our baby slept in bed with us. The stretches of sleep became longer, and I began to feel more in tune with my baby’s needs and natural rhythms. It felt natural and familiar. Without even realizing it, I had found my way back to the same sense of closeness and comfort I had grown up with.
By the time our second baby arrived, I felt much more confident. I spent less time worrying about doing things the “right” way and trusted what worked for our family. Looking back, I’m glad I learned to trust my intuition. It gave me a sense of peace that no app or technology could ever replace. My kids now sleep in their own bedroom, but every once in a while, they still find their way into our bed. And when they do, I hope being close to us gives them the same comfort and security I felt growing up.
Like families in any other culture, East and Southeast Asian families around the world and in the U.S. have varied approaches to sleep and bedtime routines. This is an aspect of parenting we don’t always discuss, even though sleep is an essential part of life and survival and takes up a significant portion of our day. Do we rely on science, follow our cultural practices, or simply act on instinct when it comes to sleep<hr ?
The AANHPI Breastfeeding Week theme for 2026 is “Better Data, Better Care for AANHPI Families”. The AANHPI Lactation Collaborative invites you to stay tuned to find out more about what they are planning and join in this breastfeeding week to explore why data equity matters and ways we can address those gaps. Helpful resources for staying connected with the AANHPI Lactation Collaborative:
La Leche League resources for safe infant sleep:
Supporting Breastfeeding Families–Today, Tomorrow, Always
Please consider donating to La Leche League USA.
Your gift helps support this blog and the website!
Donations of any amount are gratefully accepted. Thank you!
Follow us on:
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Category: Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Breastfeeding Week, Breastfeeding and Sleep, LLL Support
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