5 reasons why lullabies calm babies (and parents)

Analysis: besides helping to get the baby off to sleep at 4am, lullabies have many benefits for both infant and care-giver

It's 4am and the baby's crying again. How do you calm your teary-eyed child back into sleep? How do you cope with your child’s anxieties - and your own? There are plenty of great ways to rock, shush, and soothe, but here are five reasons why lullabies could work for both you and your baby.

Calming, hypnotic, and effective

The musical construction of lullabies is very effective in creating a soothing atmosphere where stresses can subside. Typically, songs designed as lullabies are conservative in pitch range and dynamic levels. They are slow, soft, repetitive, and keep a gentle, swinging beat pattern. While sometimes throwing in well anticipated, larger melodic jumps, lullabies generally stick to smaller intervals.

The reasoning behind these musical choices is that such material is easily memorised and singable. It reinforces familiarity and security. With the main objective being to induce calm and sleep, it makes sense that the musical choices made won’t startle the listener.

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Some might find this feeling of sameness to be disinteresting, but perhaps that hypnotic flow is exactly what you want if you're wanting energies brought down into stillness and sleep. And while you're calming your child with song, you, the caregiver, are also calming yourself.

Brain food

Your baby’s brain is quickly growing, and their hearing is fully developed halfway through pregnancy, so it’s never too early to start singing lullabies. They could be enjoying these songs before you even meet.

Once born, babies may seem like the friend that had too many G&Ts last Saturday, but there’s a lot going on up there. As the old saying goes, babies are like sponges. The majority of brain growth happens before they’re five so it’s unsurprising that child-directed singing benefits a range of learning and development. This includes pitch and rhythm coordination, language acquisition, healthy hormone exchange and cultural awareness.

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From RTÉ Radio 1's Mooney Goes Wild, did you know that parents are ditching traditional lullabies to sing their children to sleep, in favour of chart-topping pop songs?

Looking further down the line, lullabies with their musically conservative and linguistically repetitive features are also a great entry point for music-making and language learning. As for your audience? They are swaddled tight, non-judgmental and ready to love your singing whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro.

Time for bonding

Not only are lullabies tools to educate and calm, but they can also help you and your child connect. In the formative years between birth and 3 years of age, children are discerning boundaries and relationships. What is safe and what’s not? Who is family, friend or foe? The special, calming time of lullabies, where safety is encouraged, can be an excellent way to establish primary relationships.

While your baby is comprehending those relationship networks around them, lullabies can also help parents contemplate and strengthen their connection with their baby. Studies have even shown that singing and making-music with your baby can have a synchronising effect on heart and breathing rates. Talk about being on the same wavelength!

From RTÉ Jr in 2013, The Snoozer Hour with Audrey Donohue playing lullabies and relaxing music perfect for naptime

Personal expression

In addition to using lullabies as a connective device, they can also provide space for parents to express thoughts and emotions. In their more private context, lullaby lyrics can vocalise their inner narratives through both literal and metaphorical means. The inclusion of such lyrics can help caregivers process these complex emotions.

Dorothy Commins put it very well in her 1967 book Lullabies of the World: "lullabies are love songs. Sometimes they are gay and sometimes they are sad; but, whatever the mood, they are always tender. They are the expression of one of the deepest emotions of the human spirit."

Parenthood can be a turbulent time. While there is ecstatic happiness, there is also a marbling of other, very honest emotions. Immense love is exclaimed, frustration is aired and anxieties are disclosed. We even see a sense of loss over one’s previous life sometimes shining through.

Community structure and culture heritage

The narratives and relationships that come through lullaby lyrics give us a lot of information about the narrator's feelings on their surrounding community. Some lullabies reflect integration, while others display isolation. Through generations of being passed down, lullabies – especially older examples – intangibly house a precious cultural and community legacy.

Furthermore, they reflect one’s culture through the stories, characters, and folklore included in lyrics. For a genre of song that is sweet and innocent on the surface, some of these stories can actually be quite dark. This can be seen as an expression of one’s beliefs – what will happen or who might intervene if something unfortunate were to happen; certain manifestations that might occur if one undertakes a certain ritual. They can also be seen as folk explanation for historical unknowns or taboo subjects – infant mortality, teething and breastfeeding, infidelity and abandonment; all of these can be interpreted through the layers of fantastical lullaby lyrics.

In the end, lullabies are brimming with cultural enactment, personal expression, opportunities for bonding, educational support and – most functionally – encouraging sleep. Whether it’s 4am and the baby’s crying, or you’re just interested in learning these songs, keep singing.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ