Entangled nights: The affective, material, and cultural politics of co-sleeping

Co-sleeping, where caregiver-infant dyads share a sleeping surface, is a culturally embedded caregiving practice across many societies. Despite its benefits, co-sleeping challenges Western norms and raises SUDI concerns. Existing research often examines co-sleeping through narrow lenses, reducing nighttime care to binary oppositions of safe versus unsafe. Addressing this gap, this study explored co-sleeping practices of 16 mother-baby dyads in Aotearoa New Zealand using new materialism and assemblage theory. Data from interviews and digital diaries revealed that co-sleeping emerges not solely from individual choice but from complex interactions between material arrangements, embodied experiences, and institutional forces. Three paradoxes emerged: vigilant rest, the safety paradox, and the good mother paradox. Findings demonstrated that co-sleeping is a dynamic process of negotiation among bodies, materials, spaces, and social forces, with implications for strength-based, family-tailored, and culturally responsive infant sleep safety strategies that move beyond one-size-fits-all recommendations.