Gender-role attitudes and sleep among full-time employed mothers and fathers in Taiwan: a three-wave longitudinal study

Abstract Background Gender-role attitudes may shape how employed parents understand work and family roles, but their implications may depend on social position. We examined whether these attitudes were associated with subsequent sleep quality among full-time employed mothers and fathers, and whether this association differed by parent gender. We hypothesized that more traditional attitudes would be associated with poorer subsequent sleep to a greater extent among mothers than among fathers. Methods Participants were 523 full-time employed Taiwanese parents of at least one child aged 12 years or younger, assessed at baseline and approximately 3 and 6 months later. Primary linear mixed models included 478 participants with at least one follow-up assessment and complete covariate data and predicted follow-up Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores from baseline gender-role attitudes, parent gender, and their interaction, adjusting for baseline sleep and demographic covariates. Ordered-categorical analyses examined measurement properties and cross-gender comparability of the attitude items. Results After accounting for sleep quality at study entry, the association between gender-role attitudes and later sleep differed between mothers and fathers in the hypothesized direction (b = 0.126, p = .028). The estimated associations ran in opposite directions, although neither was statistically significant on its own in the primary model. This difference was near zero without accounting for sleep at study entry and, on average, across all three assessments. The attitude items were not fully comparable between mothers and fathers. Conclusions A hypothesized mother–father difference in the association between gender-role attitudes and later sleep was observed after accounting for sleep at study entry. This exploratory pattern was not consistent across longitudinal approaches, and limited comparability of the attitude items across groups leaves its substantive meaning uncertain. These findings leave open a question worth pursuing: whether the same attitudes relate to sleep differently depending on the everyday work and family circumstances in which they are held. Future studies can test this by directly measuring how daily caregiving and household work are shared—a promising next step for research on parental sleep.