To not understand how single working mothers are responsible for this

[jessicawessica]

According to a study carried out by scientists at UCL, child obesity is the fault of single working mothers.
Their study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine concluded that children living in a working single mother household were 24.3% more likely to become overweight than those living in a household with a SAHM and partner.
Apparently the father's employment status had "no significant impact" on their DCs BMI.
AIBU to be completely outraged by this?
Why is this the mother's fault?
How can the father have no bearing on their DCs obesity.?

Tbh I reckon the stats would be the same for single working fathers - but there are far fewer of them.

Studies like this are usually used to back up the sexist notion that looking after kids is a woman’s job, and that women should be SAHMs ‘for the sake of the children’. While it may be true that children are generally better off with a parent being around during the day, it doesn’t have to be the mother. And yet the studies (and media reports about them) never really seem to consider that, and just go on about working mothers vs SAHMs - because kids are the women’s responsibility.

Did this study mention anything about single dads? Or couples with SAHDs and working mums? I imagine they ignored same-sex couples too.

They can deny their misogynistic social conditioning all they want, but it’s there every time they equate ‘mother’ with ‘default primary caregiver’.

The biggest factors for me are lack of time and lack of support. I am sure I would cook more healthily if I had somebody to watch the children while I chopped vegetables.

Luckily I am not super low income so I can afford healthy frozen meals with lots of actual vegetables in, good quality easy food, etc. But I do strongly feel the impact of the lack of time and support.

Another point that nobody has made yet is that you have less support in modelling healthy eating patterns at meals. It's just you. It's easier to set the pattern for proper family meals when there are two grown ups.

YANBU at all. This is about absent fathers not single mothers, yet again it’s a society blame on the mother. It is another reason why men being able to leave pregnant partners or kids with no consequence or embarrassment is proving disastrous to kids. Very sad state of modern society.

They're statistics. So nothing to be outraged about. They are what they are. No-one made them up.

Nitrous, you make some excellent points.

I haven't looked at the study but I suspect there aren't enough single working dads to get a good sample. I found some figures online suggesting that 13.5% of lone parents in the UK are dads. Not sure how many within that would be working. Certainly I'm quite surprised by that being so high as 13.5% as I have never even met a single dad throughout my DC's time at nursery and school so far.

yeah, there is one parent that feeds the kids shite...

I don't work, too fucking knackered with two autistic children with 6 diagnoses between them plus one myself with another on the waiting list. and it is hard enough to make them home cooked food everyday, without having to go to work as well. there would be an increase in throw it in the microwave/oven food.

doing all the parenting is bloody hard work, something has got to give somewhere. (for me it is going out to work)

Time poor working lone parent here too.

McDonald's once a week after swimming and lots of pasta and veggie ready meals topped up with veg and fresh salad.
It's far from perfect but they won't eat what I batch cook and they have to eat something.

I had a 3 year period where our food bill for me and dd could not go over £15/week or I couldn't pay my bills. I doubt her overeating of carrots, lentils and eggs contributed to this research.

I'm not that poor atm (just waiting for UC to catch me) I work and I'm a full time student. My children aren't obese but they should be because our diets are crap. I'm just fucking knackered. I came home yesterday from work, stripped the beds, did some studying and ordered pizza. I'm quite strict with food these days and serve up healthy home cooked food. I put everything on the plate and ask them to leave what they Don t want.
Yesterday I couldn t muster up the energy to use all my pans for the food to be left.
If I had a partner here we would share the load

Yet another piece of sound research turned to trash by the gutter press. Far from blaming the working single mums, the research suggests that an increased involvement of fathers in child care is the way to improve childhood obesity.

Why not go straight to the source and stop getting your scientific education from the Mirror?

Bloody hell, I must be crap as a single mother, my son looks like a string of spaghetti even when he eats twice as much as I do, may be all the exercise he does on the Xbox!

Now more seriously, single working mothers been the cause of obesity or feckless absent fathers who have not a minute, a penny or a thought for their kids? Honestly... it is always the women who have to get the blame even if they are the ones holding the fort and not letting the kids down.

My son was grown in organic made from scratch food, but that was possible because I was working part time and in my salary I could afford it. I can see very easily how a mother working 40 hrs a week with no support (family, friends, neighbours) and a bad salary can go for a greasy take away... she is too exhausted to make the effort, may not have the time to cook or simply put, she can only afford a can of spaghetti hoops or some baked beans on toast.

Yes, I do think this research should be used as a pointer to facilitating single-parent families a better standard of living.

It just seems to me that, once again, the "research" is biased against single working mothers.
Not SAHM single mothers.
Not working mothers with a partner.
Not SAHM dads.
Not absent working Dads.
Just mothers.

Far from blaming the working single mums, the research suggests that an increased involvement of fathers in child care is the way to improve childhood obesity.

Because fathers are reknown for their cooking skills and pulling their weight domestically.

I work around 40 hours per week plus 19 hours a week at college and 7 hours a week studying online for my job. I can afford to cook healthy meals, maybe not organic but fresh, from scratch meals. My only problem is time. I have none. I get out of bed and go to college, come home from college and go to work, home from work to bed, rinse and repeat.

Weekends, I work 12-16 hour shifts as it's the only time I am free to work and I can't afford to only work part-time.

I don't imagine my situation is unusual for a single parent family.

As well as the food side - there is the issue of less time to prepare and cook and also financial resources (or poverty) which play a huge part in this.

Also we do go out at the weekends but we have never done a park after school because ds is in childcare most days after school and if not I am doing 101 things as well as trying to cook a proper dinner.

At the weekends if there are 2 parents one can go out to play with dc whilst the other does jobs/cooks lunch etc. One parent has to do the jobs/meals etc.

That being said my df did bugger all and my dm did everything but then we were all on the big side in those days.

It's hard being a single working parent. We all do our best

Again, the research has just gathered the statistics. It's not biased. It just is a set of numbers that show what's happening.

The press has chosen what language to use to express what the researchers found.

If you are separated/ divorced and share the DCs 50:50, how do you ensure that your DCs are getting a good diet?
When they are with their dads 4 days per week how do you police what they are being fed? You can't, so it's not fair to blame obesity on the SWP.

I'm a working single mum and struggled with my weight throughout childhood (parents were together). It's given me a bit of a complex about my DS's weight so I try my best but PPs are right, the majority of us are so time poor that it's hard not to resort to frozen rubbish for dinner when you're exhausted, stressed and still have mountains of work to get through before bed. I try my best to give him healthy and balanced meals as much as possible but it isn't always possible. Then I feel like a bit of a failure. I know this is just the information that's been collected but it seems like single mothers, working or not, are always to blame for something. I find myself almost trying to overcompensate to fend off any preconceptions people may have when I really shouldn't give a toss. When studies like this are published it does get me down a bit but maybe that's just me!

THe main theme when single mums are blamed is poverty.
What gets my goat is two thirds of single mums do not get any maintenance. Maintenance payments are usually not representative of salary with many men going self employed and dodging the system. This is a huge govt. failing and vilifying the single mothers for being the poorest in society and having to work all hours to make ends meet distracts from the fact a) the govt could do something about the extreme poverty suffered by children in single mother households but don't (sort out maintenance weasels) b) they are all too happy to blame the weakest in society yet again. Victim blaming has become mainstream in the last decade thanks to the Tories.

FWIW we were also responsible for knife crime a few weeks ago. I presume because we don't spend enough time with our kids due to having to work over time to keep them alive and the closure of all social clubs available due to austerity...how dare we!

David Cameron also blamed us for the London Riots.

Thank you, @MotherOfDragonite.

I remember a study a few years back that, according to the media reports, showed that children in 2-parent households ‘where the mothers worked’ had worse obesity outcomes than children in 2-parent households ‘where the mother stayed at home’.

Now, since this could presumably be improved by either parent staying at home and having the time and money to feed their kids nutritious food, it should have been reported that children whose both parents worked had worse outcomes. But no, it was reported as kids whose mothers worked. The expectation again was that the majority of childcare is the mother’s job, whether she works outside the home or not.

I see this recent study and/or the reports about it as more of the same. There are fewer single dads around, but that’s no excuse not to include them (I’ve not read the study so I don’t know where it stands on this). Any study/media report that does exclude single dads though ends up looking like yet another excuse to subtly shame single/working mothers.

@Jessicawessica rtft people have made it clear. It has little to do with poverty and more to do with the fact that working single mums are time poor and so have no time to cook and therefor give kids convenience foods. I guess there aren't enough single working dads to make any worthy comparison too