USPÁVÁNÍ An Embodied, Sociocultural and Intergenerational Practice of Bedtime Care in Czech Families with Toddlers
Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Sleep science has predominantly examined children’s sleep through measures of timing, duration, behaviour, and pathology, with much of the research based on quantitative studies conducted in Anglophone contexts. This has left comparatively limited understanding of culturally situated parental practices and of how families themselves interpret and enact children’s sleep. This thesis addresses this gap through an exploration of uspávání, an evening caregiving practice in the Czech Republic for which there is no direct English equivalent. Practices encompassed by uspávání, such as breastfeeding, rocking, holding, or lying beside the child until they fall asleep, may be classified in paediatric and behavioural sleep literature as sleeponset associations or sleep-onset problems. Rather than approaching these practices primarily as problematic sleep behaviours, this thesis examines uspávání as an embodied, relational, sociocultural, intergenerational, and responsive form of care through which caregivers help children transition into sleep. The study used a mixed-methods design combining a questionnaire survey with ethnographic research conducted across Moravia, in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. The ethnographic phase included focus group discussions with mothers and fathers of toddlers, participant observation in community settings and informal conversations, an informal group discussion with grandmothers, and in-depth household ethnography involving participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Together, these methods examined the prevalence, meanings, and cultural embeddedness of uspávání in Czech families. Together, these methods situate Czech toddler sleep in a broader context while revealing parental motivations, gendered perspectives, social, material and emotional memories, and the family dynamics that shape evening practices. Findings show that uspávání is widely practised in Czech families for a variety of reasons. It is not merely a form of parental behaviour but a bidirectional and flexible practice shaped by families’ current circumstances, intergenerational transmission, children’s temperaments, and parents’ personal beliefs. This thesis advances uspávání as an analytical concept for examining relational, embodied, and emotionally responsive parental support at sleep onset. It argues that scientific terminology needs to recognise and name this widespread caregiving practice so that its meanings, functions, and variability can be investigated before it is problematised or interventions aimed at promoting independent sleep onset are developed. By bringing an anthropological perspective to the study of children’s sleep, this research demonstrates that sleep is not solely a biological phenomenon but also a relational, sociocultural, and lived experience.
Author: Medvecová Tinková, Lenka
Language: English
Topic: Sleep and related disorders
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7223420592