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Article: Children's sleep: sketching historical change.
- Article from:
- Journal of Social History
- Article date:
- December 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Sleep is not a conventional historical topic. It is after all a normally silent and unrecorded activity, which means that records of past sleep patterns are hardly abundant. It is also in the largest sense a human imperative: all people need sleep, though individual experiences diverge, and it might seem unlikely that major changes in sleep occur over time. Yet we also know, from cross-cultural study, that some aspect of sleeps can vary, not only from one individual to the next but in terms of larger cultural standards. One variance involves the extent to which sleep problems are identified and highlighted. The Japanese, for example, do not worry about insomnia the way ...