I want to, but I can’t Blame him for Sleeping while the Baby Cried.

Guess what I found out? You can’t actually blame a man for sleeping soundly, even while a shrieking baby is close by (this photo was not taken while baby was crying). It obviously annoyed me to no end when my husband did this. Because sometimes, I’d be having a shower and could still hear the baby crying and I’d rush outside to find my husband sleeping happily next to her without breaking a wink. But now I know why and maybe his obliviousness isn’t to be blamed after all.

Research conducted by the British company Mindlab in 2009 categorized different sounds that would wake a man and woman up from deep sleep. Volunteers in a sleep lab were attached to an electroencephalography machine, and a variety of recorded noises were played. Using neuroscience, the researchers monitored disturbances in brain activity in response to each sound. And what was particularly interesting to me in the results was that women- whether they had children of their own or not- was awakened by the noise of a wailing infant. Whereas men were more susceptible to wake up to sounds such as rowdiness outside. So while I agree that it’s infuriating when they are able to sleep through ‘our’ sleepless nights, we can only put it down to an unfair trait in biology this time.

Leave a Reply


WordPress.com Logo


Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s