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Study Links Working Moms to Fat Kids
Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens
Moms who work may have heavier kids. Credit: Getty
All you working mothers can quit feeling guilty about leaving your children as you head to the office.
The kids are fat and happy. Well, fat anyway.
Researchers say the more years you work outside the home, the more likely your children will sit in front of the TV and say, "Gosh, I miss Mommy. Pass the Cheetos."
With a lot of bony fingers already waving disapprovingly at working moms, this conclusion is proving controversial.
No offense, lead researcher Taryn Morrissey tells the Canadian television network CTV.
"We want to emphasize that this is not a maternal employment issue," she tells CTV. "This is a family balance issue. This is not about maternal employment per se. This is about some other environmental factor or several factors."
Morrissey, an assistant professor at the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., along with researchers from Cornell University and the University of Chicago, studied data on more than 900 children in 10 American cities, focusing on third-, fifth- and sixth-graders.
On average, children of working mothers had body mass indexes 10 percent higher than other kids their age, the study, which appears in the journal Child Development, found.
"For a child of average height, this is equivalent to a gain in weight of nearly one pound (half a kilogram) every five months above and beyond what would typically be gained as a child ages," Morrissey tells CTV.
Researchers are not quite sure why this is so. But, Morrissey tells the network, "we have hunches."
Previous studies suggest families with two working parents tend to eat out more often, eat more fast food and are more likely to skip breakfast, she says.
Working parents have limited time for grocery shopping and food preparation and may rely more on outside food sources that tend to be high in fat and calories, she adds.
"I know that families are really time crunched so that is often hard, but doing as much as you can could be one way to try to prevent this," Morrissey tells CTV.
Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa, tells CTV the study illustrates how complicated and interwoven a problem obesity can be.
"I think what is really important here to notice is that this is a really complicated issue," he tells the network. "I don't think many people would have thought that whether they were working or not would have a bearing on their children's weight. We need to stop simplifying obesity to say people are eating too much and moving too little. It is a complicated problem with a lot of variables."
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
2-07-2011 @ 4:58PM
Wendy Sue Swanson, MD said...I simply can't believe the introductory few sentences of this post. Good grief, Mr Henderson, you really don't understand the struggles and pressures of working moms. It's far more complicated than guilt.
I don't think you read the study. Or if you did, you didn't read it carefully. The study controlled for the effect of sedentary activity (TV viewing), and physical activity had on BMI in these families. The authors really wanted to know if non-traditional work hours (nights/weekends/evenings) had different effects on BMI, and if duration in the work force affected BMI differently. They looked deeper into the mechanism of why working moms had a greater likelihood of having a child with overweight children. They controlled for TV time, physical activity, home environment, parental supervision, maternal depression, if dad worked more than 35 hours, household income, race, birth weight, etc....
I'll have a post up (I'm a pediatrician who read the study) on my blog: Seattle Mama Doc, by the end of the day. Your post was my motivation to clear the air...
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2-07-2011 @ 6:20PM
Natasha Burgert said...Mr. Henderson,
I know that you may be one of the privileged who was able to have your mother at home full-time. I wonder, however, if she would be upset if she read your scathing words about women who were not as fortunate. As a woman who chooses to work outside the home, I am offended by your generalizations, and misrepresentation of this report. And the irony? Your website sponsor sells processed foods. Watch the stones. Your glass house is being held up by Chef Boyardee.
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