The 36-Hour Day
with Lylah M. Alphonse
I'm a full-time editor, a part-time writer, and a mom and stepmom to five amazing kids, ages 1 to 14. For me it's not about finding balance, it's about the daily juggle-- my career, my commute, freelance work, homework, housework, married life, social life, and parenting-- and finding the time to get it all done.
To learn more about Lylah, check out her Work It, Mom! profile and read her blog at writeeditrepeat.blogspot.com.
New study: Working moms raise unhealthy kids?
Categories: Parenting, The Juggle, Uncategorized, Working? Living?
I had to take a couple of deep breaths in order to get past the first paragraph of this BBC News story: “Children whose mothers work are less likely to lead healthy lives than those with ’stay at home’ mothers, a study says.”
The study by the UCL Institute of Child Heath (ICH) focused on the families of 12,500 5-year-olds; the same children took part in an earlier study which found that those with working mothers were more likely to be obese or overweight by the age of 3.
So, let me get this straight: The new study “discovered” that the same kids who were likely to be obese or overweight by the age of 3 were also less likely to lead healthy lives at age 5? And that it’s all mom’s fault for working outside the home?
Sorry, BBC and ICH. I’m calling foul on this one.
Among the findings:
- 5-year-olds whose mothers worked part-time or full-time were more likely to primarily consume sweetened drinks between meals.
- 5-year-olds with working mothers used their computers or watched television for at least two hours a day.
- Kids with working moms were more likely to be driven to school compared to the children of “stay at home” mothers who tended to walk or cycle.
Among the loopholes:
- Working outside of the home doesn’t automatically make you buy cookies and soda when you’re stocking the pantry; sounds like more of an education issue than an employment one to me. Also: These studies took place Great Britain, where the schools are notorious for serving nutritionally bankrupt food to students (check out chef Jamie Oliver’s efforts to change this). How is that the fault of working mothers?
- A Harvard Medical School study earlier this year found that while TV time isn’t beneficial for kids, it’s not necessarily harmful either. While spending tons of time in front of the tube isn’t good for anyone, what your kids are watching has much more of an impact than the fact that the TV is on. (As for the computer, there are plenty of great educational sites for kids out there.)
- For goodness sake, are moms really the only ones responsible for taking kids to school in the morning?
Professor Catherine Law, who led the new study, theorized that working moms may not have enough time to provide healthy foods or opportunities for physical activity, but insisted that the results of the study “do not imply that mothers should not work.” (No… the British Institute for Economic and Social Research took care of that with their 2003 study, which concluded that ”going back to work after the birth of a child can have a negative impact on a child’s development - unless you have lots of money.”) Instead, Law says, her study shows that there need to be more policies and programs to help support parents (which, presumably, mothers would be too busy to participate in because of all that detrimental working they insist on doing instead of being at home where they belong).
The ICH study did not look at fathers and their employment levels, because their numbers have remained stable while the number of moms in the workforce has “increased dramatically.” Here is a brief list of other things that have also ”increased dramatically” but are not taken into account in the study, in my opinion:
- Household expenses, making working outside of the home less of a choice and more of a necessity for many people.
- The availability and marketing of processed foods, making it more expensive — and, for some people, more difficult — to buy the wholesome foods that are actually good for you.
- Nostalgia and the belief that old gender stereotypes are the only way to go, making “working mom guilt” more widespread than ever.
The embers of the Mommy Wars must have gone dim for a second. Lucky thing this study came along to fan the flames.
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How do you get the argument that the availability of processed foods makes healthy foods too expensive or elusive? Honestly, I am so tired of hearing the 1,000 arguments why parents can’t feed their kids right. There is nothing that I ate as a kid that isn’t available at every inner-city grocery store in this country. And, we have more healthy options today in this country than anywhere (or at any other time) in the world.
I don’t know if I believe this has any link to parents working. Just because a report is called a “study” doesn’t mean it’s researched properly or unbiased. But working or not, parents, set priorities. Your kid needs to eat certain things - you all learned this in elementary school. Focus on those things first. If they can’t stomach the most common vegetables, make an effort. If you have enough brains to hold a job, you have enough brains to plan healthy meals that your kids will eat. If your kid doesn’t get good food at school, pack a lunch. Stop looking for a scapegoat!
And chase your kid around if he isn’t inclined to exercise. I used to take my wee tots for a 1-2 mile walk every evening, because my youngest was too fond of sitting on her butt. That’s just one of 100 examples of how I kept my little chunk moving. Hey, if my kids aren’t at their physical (and mental) best, the buck stops here. Not with the daycare meal planner or the government or the food processing companies. Right here.
SKL | October 22nd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
SKL - I am inclined to agree with Lylah on the foods issue. Realistically, most families right now have restricted budgets and limited time because of work schedules with which to ensure that their children are getting wholesome foods.
For instance, do you buy boxed pasta which is laden with preservatives or do you make your pasta from scratch, a healthier but extremely time consuming venture? Same with breads - do you buy breads with preservatives and elevated levels of sugars, even whole grain varieties, or do you bake all of your own bread? The latter is far and away healthier, but not realistic for most.
Now, picture a single income household in one of the most expensive areas of the nation. You have 100 dollars to buy food for two weeks. Do you buy a 4 dollar loaf of organic, whole grain bread or do you buy two loaves of Wonder whole grain at half the cost or less per loaf? Or, using an example close to home - there are a few organic and fresh made daily bakeries around me that charge a minimum of 7 dollars a loaf for their product. Sorry, but I’m sticking with the 1.40 loaf of Wonder whole grain white bread even though the 7 dollar loaf is infinitely better and healthier.
I know that you have successfully put yourself into a situation where you have been able to make choices that may be less restricted by limited finances just based on your comments here, but you’re actually an anomaly among most American families (which in this case, is a great thing).
I don’t think that the implication here on the behalf of the blogger is that working moms must automatically default to feeding their kids junk and fast food daily, but to say that the best foods available are not cost prohibitive for most working families isn’t exactly an accurate statement either. Face it, a kid whose fed a diet of nothing but homemade, fresh ingredients without preservatives, elevated levels of sugar and sodium (even the low sodium options are scary salty and sugar free items tend to be more costly) is going to be inherently healthier than a kid who’s fed a well balanced diet of the less expensive versions of those foods.
Phe | October 23rd, 2009 at 9:47 am
Actually, SKL having lived in one of the areas they call a food desert here, you CANNOT get enough to eat properly on a low budget.
The local corner store (the only thing offering groceries in a 3 mile radius) had the following fresh items: lettuce, tomato, bananas, apples. The lettuce was usually 1/2 rotten, the tomatos had huge rotted areas in them, bananas were at a ripeness that they had to be eaten in the next 2 days, apples were mushy.
Going to canned then (never mind the high sodium content so bad in an area with rampant hypertension): green beans, peas, corn (cream & plain). Fruits: peaches, fruit cocktail (both packed in syrup, great for a population that tends toward type 2 diabetes).
And together you have ALL the fruits and vegetables available.
In the summer the walk to the grocery store was OK - encouraged me not to buy to much and nothing frozen (would melt on the way home). But to do that walk weekly in the winter? I can see how anyone trailing 3 kids wouldn’t do it; it would be downright dangerous. So they go to the local store and try to make the best of it. And that, is how we have some of the problem in poor urban areas.
The area I live now is slightly more upscale. There are apartment buildings that are quite cheap that have the families of 4 in studios like before, but since a store is within a mile, you don’t see the levels of obesity in what is otherwise, essentially the same population. To me, the correlation is crystal clear.
Mich | October 23rd, 2009 at 12:23 pm
But Mich, if people demanded real food, the stores would carry it. If people wanted to buy fresh tomatoes, they wouldn’t stay on the shelves long enough to get rotten.
In the big city near me (which is one of the most impoverished in the nation), there’s a tremendous range of choices in multiple grocery stores that anyone can walk to (I’ve shopped there so I know), yet people are still obese, and so are many of their kids. Every obese person I ever knew could have eaten better than they chose to. So I really don’t believe access is the reason behind the obesity problem.
And Phe, I don’t buy organic bread either, because it’s one of the few organic foods that really are way more expensive than “conventional.” But note that when I was growing up, my mom never bought “brown bread,” only white. 99% of the time, our fruits and veggies came from cans. We drank only whole milk. We ate meat most days, red meat more than poultry. We never heard of the term “organic.” So why were nearly all of us slim? Because even though we didn’t eat expensive food, at least we weren’t eating a constant supply of sugar and processed fats. And we moved our butts.
Take a serious look at the spending choices the “poor” people make. If you took out all the stuff that was either purely unhealthy or non-nutritional, you’d have a fair chunk of change left for basic, cheap, super-foods such as carrots, oats, beans, and fat-free milk. It doesn’t have to be organic to be better than froot loops, fast food, and kool-aid (and cigarettes and beer for the adults).
Sorry, but I came up from what today would be considered poverty. I have been sufficiently intimate with that side of things. I never said it was easy, but parenting is about prioritizing. And working hard and sacrificing.
SKL | October 23rd, 2009 at 10:44 pm
There’s certainly an issue that stores will stock what sells, but that makes it harder for anyone to embark on healthier eating. One person asking doesn’t get the store to change; one person asking more than once gets that person barred from the store.
The store buys their fresh stuff from others stores on the day before the “sell buy” so it never actually arrvies fresh because independents can’t compete price wise with real grocers.
I guess that is the issue; our city has a dearth of actual grocers. There are certainly poor areas where there are grocery stores or fruit markets (and the makeup of the population reflects it) and there are areas where there are not. And walking 5 miles to the nearest store would literally be playing roulette with your life.
There you would have to get enough people to band together, and likely get outside help (people willing to offer rides to the grocery store for example, or get the media to come down and video your boycott & put it on the news) to get the local stores, which have a near 100% hold on a stuck population, to change.
Mich | October 27th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
My daughter is into buying all the organic stuff, but she’s finding that on a VERY limited budget, it’s not cost effective. When organic products cost anywhere from 50 - 100% more than the processed variety, most people (particularly those on a budget) will buy the non-organic. Hey, I practically grew up on a farm (my grandparents). We had chickens, hogs, a huge vegetable garden, geese, a cow (nothing better than fresh milk!), etc. If I could, I’d gladly go back to that. However, not at the current prices. I can’t afford it.
Many years ago (in another lifetime), I worked for a poverty law center and we assisted people with getting food stamps. Now, I’m not saying that some aren’t above abusing the system, cause there are, BUT when you have to feed a family of 4 or more on what food stamps are given, it really doesn’t leave much room for luxaries such as organic food. And for a lot of people, it IS a luxerary (?).
I’m not saying that we can’t all manage to eat “healthy”, but when it comes down to processed v. organic, my budget, and the most bang for the buck, comes first.
Jane | October 28th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Oh, and besides, I really wouldn’t give too much credence to that study. I don’t know about you, but very few kids “cycle” to school in this country anyway. Not that they couldn’t, but most parents won’t let their kids even walk to school and it’s more out of fear than anything else.
So, imho, their so-called study is totally skewed anyway. Not enough data and variables to make it legit.
Jane | October 28th, 2009 at 5:52 pm