Thank you! I'm a working mom, too, and my daughter is healthy and happy, and so am I! My mother also worked outside the home when my sister and I were kids, and we grew up fine....like you said, some women have no choice but to work. I am a single mom, so I kind of HAVE to work, ya know to support my child, give her a roof over her head, clothes on her back, all that good stuff. We go out to eat fast food on rare occasions (Wendy's, it's up the street lol), but she always gets the oranges as her side, and I get a baked potato, she and I both hate french fries! She doesn't drink anything but water, milk, and apple juice (no sugar added, 100% juice), she eats almost any vegetable and most fruits.

SKL and Melissa,

Are either of you single mothers? Because if you have husbands, then at least you aren't doing everything yourselves--there's someone to help with the laundry, the school pickups, and yes, even the cooking.

But for single mothers there is no one else. They have to work sometimes two jobs just to make ends barely meet, and are often too tired to cook or play with their children when they get home. I know my mom was. She was the only one who could pick me up from school, and then we had an hour commute home, by which time it would be almost seven o'clock at night. Plus, I was a picky eater, so it was a lot easier to take me to McDonald's and have me eat on the car ride home rather than wait until I was home and barely have enough time for dinner before it was bed time.

I didn't learn how to make good eating choices from her, and as an adolescent I suffered from a number of eating disorders. And it was because she didn't want to be a "Welfare Mom" that she did work so hard and long.

I don't think it's a pointless study at all. I honestly think that not having at least one parent at home is one of the reasons kids get into trouble so often.

Yes, Elizabeth, I am a single mother of two tots/preschoolers. I work long hours (minimum 10 per day and many weekend hours too), and also serve several nonprofit organizations. I keep a reasonably maintained house and my kids are very healthy and bright. As for being tired, note that I'm over 40, so if anyone ought to be tired after a hard day's work, I should. (A lot of "tired" is attitude.) So I can't accept the argument that it's "too much" for the average woman, single/working or otherwise, to give her kids proper care. If a woman isn't accomplishing it, she should examine herself for reasons why.

I also know many, many kids with stay-at-home moms who were far more messed up than the kids of working moms that I knew. They managed to get into plenty of trouble. It wasn't about whether their moms worked or didn't, but about whether their moms were grounded in reality. Being out in the world, working or otherwise, can facilitate that.

SKL,

My mother was in her 40s as well, having had me later in life. And no, her tiredness wasn't "attitude" but the fact that she suffered from a diseased thyroid, among other health problems. I am happy for you that you feel you have so much energy with your two children, and hope it lasts when they get older.

And yes, women should be examining reasons why they aren't caring properly for their children, and were it not for this study, the subject might not even be broached. To say a study is pointless is to say learning is pointless.

"Perhaps that is an unexamined cause of the obesity epidemic."

That argument might not be so funny if welfare moms weren't way fatter, on average.

Of course the argument that people should be paid for doing nothing is a completely different topic, but I'll just say, money was invented for commercial exchanges, meaning you only get some if you give something. And no, taking care of your own kid and cleaning after your own self is not "giving something."

Maybe the title of the article should have been, "kids with only one parent who has to work two jobs to stay off of welfare are less healthy" instead of insinuating that working moms is the issue