Mumsnetters quoted in the Indie today in article about childhood obesity.

[franke]

news.independent.co.uk/health/article2790964.ece

Working mums get it in the neck again.

As pointydog said, the most accurate quote was the last one - it's down to poor parenting, not whether one or both parents works too much.

"it's families where no one works who sit around eating chips and hardly leave the chair except to buy more chips etc."

Nothing like a reasoned, balanced view, eh?

This is just more "working mother" bashing - it doesn't matter how much dad works, all offsprings' problems are down to mum.

So depressing.

I agree that it's working mother bashing. If the mother's not at home, how can she be making her child obese exactly???

I'm a SAHM and proud of it and this is great and good research, but it's been interpreted poorly.

The research says more about quality of childcare than about whether parent is working or not.

It's also a typically poor use of stats: just because there's a correlation between X (women in work since 1984) and Y (childhood obesity) does not make one the cause of the other.

I could, in a similar manner, cite a decline in knitting and link it to the rise in childhood obesity since 1984.

I think the original research study is fine, there may be a link since the 80s.

But the actual horses mouth (GOSHospital) conclude - "Long hours of maternal employment, rather than lack of money, may impede young children's access to healthy foods and physical activity,"

It's about children's access to health, not about the fact that their parents both work. They can't access good health if their childcarers aren't doing it for you.

As for the 1980s link - wasn't it around that time that school dinners were privatised to Turkey Twizzlers PLC?

A more useful examination would be:

Why are the govt still dictating 50% of energy intake should be from carbohydrates?

This is clearly going to cause weight gain in anyone not visiting a gym 3 x a week (which is most of us, unfortunately)

The low-fat high-carb diet advice has a lot to answer for, not least the growth of a monstrous diet food industry pumping people full of horrific chemically-processed food.

If this article had a point at all, it should have been arguing for more physical activities in nurseries and primary schools, not bitching about women working. Totally unconstructive.

That dietary advice started in the 80s didn't it?

But ultimately children aren't in control of their diet. Advice won't work if Nanny's feeding children bad food and not letting them be active.

I don't think most people would follow a 50% carb diet anyway - even the 5 a day one isn't followed and that's been made really clear to people.

'If women are working there will be less time for food preparation and more resorting to convenience food'...er, yes, mate, well then tell their FATHERS to GET IN THE KITCHEN FFS.

(A point with which Mr Inferior fully agreed, I should add .)

Surely the rise in obesity has been caused by education authorities selling off school playing fields and lack of pe and sport in state schools

I can't remember anyone using the school fields much at school, though, except for snogging.

And anyway this is posh kids who don't all go to state schools.

I suspect most of them are state school parents whose mothers work but I may be wrong. Actually one thing parents often do obssess over with small under 5s when they go back to work is insisting the nanny feeds them properly, organically etc etc. Meals and agreeing them is a major area most working parents sort out early on. It's often something you ask about in interviews.

They could have said - fathers returning to work mean fatter children, couldn't they? But they have to blame the mothers.

What has state or private got to do with it?

ffs what an absolute load of rubbish - the working mothers I know spend a great deal of time making sure their children eat healthily. My sons nursery has an organic menu devised by a nutritionalist. How can they really be saying that middle class children have a worse diet that some poorer fmillies - they are the ones that cannot afford Waitrose, Organic, etc or don't have the education/knowledge/inclination to bother about this. I am in the lucky position of being able to spend as much as I like on good quality, mostly organic food for my children and that is directly becasue we are a duel income family.

Times today adds the authors say more work is needed and there are lots of other risk factors for overweight. "Among thefurther work would be a study showing whether or not children's diets or activity levels are actually different when their mothers work. If not, then the trends found in this study need an alternative expalnation. Natioal Sts. from the Health Survey for England do tend to suggest that ocial class is relevant to a child's likelihood of being overweight. The new study did not look at absolute levels of overweight for each income group, but the effect of mothers working on the risks of overweight."

that is a profoundly misogynist article, though the research is pretty interesting, the interpretation is very suspect.
am irritated by this comment though:
"If women are going back to work early after having children they are unlikely to be breast-feeding up to the recommended six months"
WRONG WRONG WRONG the recommendation is exclusive bf for six months, the recommendation is to bf for at least two years.

oh god another stick to beat ourselves with...
(on the plus side hey! at least i don't have a nanny . never thought that would cause for celebration...).

Very very sexist indeed.

well said BrummieOntheRun

'If this article had a point at all, it should have been arguing for more physical activities in nurseries and primary schools, not bitching about women working. Totally unconstructive.'

And working mothers are more likely to afford school fees at prep schools with really good diets where there is sport on the menu every day too. Although this was about under 5s I suppose.

There does seem to be a desire to keep women at home. Even popular culture of women as attractive play things whose aim in life is to marry the rich footballer etc plays to the same theme.

Oh goodie. DD2 is horribly skinny, so this means that if I put in a few more hours at work there's a real chance she'll fatten up a bit. Yeah, right!

Agree with Xenia about the other factors such as class.
I'm sure there was some evidence in the past that showed that children of degree educated mothers were less likely to be overweight than those who had a lower overall eduation endpoint
Just throwing that into the fray

Aha ! I have a cunning plan. I will give up work thus making myself available 24/7 to make non-fattening nutritious meals for my family and never ever give them junk. And in order to make them more physically active and bring in some money, I will send them out to clean chimneys, do paper rounds, sweep the streets, dig gardens etc to pay the bills. Of course that means they won't be able to go to school but that's OK because they're better off with out I reckon - they've sold off all the playing fields so they can't do sport at school and then in some schools mad women poke chips at them through the fence .

It's not about the mothers; it's about the poor nutritional standards/exercise options available in many childcare settings.

Yes, in fact may be you could do a graph and I bet the fussy middle class working mothers with nannies who go to the nth degree over making sure little Johnny never gets even the whiff of a non organic meal never mind sight of a burger, do better than you're average working class child in a rather badly run council nursery with places paid for by the state and not much of a lunch provided.

Daily Mail were delighted to have yet another stick to beat working mother's with. Have just seen a copy lying around. Grrrrr!