Was there a time when your young child shared a room -- or even a bed -- with mom and dad?

If so, you needn't worry about any long-lasting impacts, according to researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Routine parent-child bed-sharing before 6 years of age appears to have no major impact on a child's development or behavior -- for better or for worse, according to the study, which is published in the August issue of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

The researchers found there is "no evidence linking [early parent-child bed-sharing], when engaged in responsibly, with any sort of problematic outcome." The finding should give experts who caution against the practice reason to reconsider their advice, said Paul Okami, the study's lead author.

SURVEY Should parents and young children share the same bed? How about the same room? No, kids need to be separated from their parents. Yes, sharing a room is OK, but not a bed. Yes, sharing a bed fosters intimacy when kids are young. Results  |  Disclaimer

Okami said that a large majority of the world's children share a room, if not a bed, with their parents. Yet American parents receive conflicting messages about the practice.

"Many -- perhaps most -- experts do not advocate bed-sharing, and the American Academy of Pediatrics cautions against 'routine' bed-sharing," he said.

Critics of the practice voice concerns that bed-sharing may cause sleep disorders or interfere with normal psychosexual development, Okami said.

However, a number of clinicians and child-rearing experts have advocated purposeful parent-child bed-sharing, or "the family bed," as it has come to be known, Okami said. These proponents claim the child will benefit from an increased capacity for intimacy.

The researchers followed a group of 205 California-born children and their parents since the children were born in 1975. Three-fourths of the families led "unconventional" lifestyles, such as single parenthood and collective living, at the study's beginning; many endorsed "natural" child-rearing practices. For this reason, the larger study -- known as the Family Lifestyles Project -- provided an unusual opportunity to investigate patterns of bed-sharing and their effects, Okami said.

Bed-sharing at some point before age 6 years was most common among those unconventional parents who considered themselves "pronatural" (20 percent) and least common among the conventional parents who were married and living together (2 percent).

The researchers found that children under 6 who shared beds with their parents were no more likely than other children to develop behavior problems, sleep problems, or psychosexually troubled relationships later in childhood and adolescence.

Children at age 6 who shared beds with their parents were found to have the same levels of behavioral maturity, emotional maturity, mood, and creativity as other children.

And when the children who had spent some of their early childhood sleeping with mom and dad were 18, the amount of time a child had spent in the "family bed" had no significant impact on his or her ability to relate to parents, adults in general, other family members or peers. Nor was there evidence of a link between bed-sharing history and a child's likelihood of using alcohol, tobacco or hard drugs; having problems with self-acceptance or considering suicide; engaging in vandalism, fights or serious crimes; being sexually active; or having either positive or negative sexual experiences.