Suffering sons put in bed (4)
I believe the answer is:
cost
'suffering' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'sons put in bed' is the wordplay.
'sons' becomes 's'.
'put in' is an insertion indicator.
'bed' becomes 'cot' (cot is a type of bed).
's' placed within 'cot' is 'COST'.
(Other definitions for cost that I've seen before include "estimate price" , "Suffering" , "Come to" , "Outlay required to buy" , "Be priced at" .)