As any parents of a young child who is a problem sleeper will confirm, permanent tiredness and constant irritability can put a huge strain on your relationship. In fact, according to a survey, lack of sleep is a big factor in divorce and separation for a third of couples.

Ahead of a new series on the subject, a poll carried out for Channel 4 suggests the average parent surveyed got fewer than six hours of sleep a night. It also found that three in 10 couples who had split up said sleep deprivation since having their child was a factor in the breakup. Nearly 45% said they had dozed off in a place they shouldn't have or was unsafe, with one in 20 admitting to falling asleep at the wheel of their car.

Children waking throughout the night, as well as the struggle to get children off to bed at a respectable hour, were equally important issues for parents. Nearly half of the 2,000 people questioned said getting their child to sleep at a consistent time was a nightly battle.

Around 11% admitted to pretending to be asleep in the night so that their partner was forced to deal with a crying child, while 11% said they had shut the door and 9% said they had turned up the TV to block out the noise of a sobbing child. A fifth of parents blamed the fact that their child had a television in their room for their failure to fall asleep.

But psychologist Tanya Byron, who is among a panel of experts taking part in the series, Bedtime Live, which will allow people to call in via video to the show and ask for help, said it wasn't about blaming parents – rather that family downtime was being eroded by the demands of work and the attraction of technologies, and that sleep was being lost as a result.

Sleep deprivation in adults was also a worry, she said, pointing to tests done on the sleep-deprived mothers. "Those without sleep were just as dangerous as those who had been drinking. One woman drove 100 metres with her eyes closed."

"What we have to remember is that fundamentally we are beings who run on circadian rhythms and we are just putting our brains under constant stress if we can't get our sleep."

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(Source: Guardian)