In a study of more than 8500 UK adults followed since their birth in 1958, researchers found that their children were 50 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese than the parents had been back in the 1960s.
Researchers found that mothers' full-time employment, which was more common in the younger generation, appeared to be a factor.
One possible explanation, according to the researchers, is that children of full-time working mums have fewer family meals or less-healthy diets in general.
Sitting down and having cooked meals with your children can improve their health, but when they are left at home after school to snack, that’s when the sugary, salty foods begin looking appetizing to them.
For the study, Dr Leah Li and colleagues at the University College London analysed data from a project that has followed a large group of Britons since their birth in 1958. They focused on 8552 participants who, in 1991, had a total of 1889 children between the ages of 4 and 9.
Overall, the children were more likely to be overweight or obese than their parents had been back in 1965: 12 per cent of boys were overweight or obese, versus 8 per cent of their fathers in childhood; and 18 per cent of girls were heavy, versus of 11 per cent in their mothers' generation.
Li's team found that both parents' current weight and mothers' employment status were associated with the risk of their children being overweight.
When parents were obese, the odds of the child being overweight were three to six times greater than when parents were normal-weight.
Similarly, about 12 per cent of parents were obese in 1991, versus 5 to 7 per cent of the first generation's parents in 1965.
So it's possible, according to Li and her colleagues that both factors (parents' weight, in particular) contributed to the intergeneration increase in childhood weight.
Based on their data, the researchers estimate that in 1991, less than 8 per cent of cases of childhood overweight or obesity could be attributable to mothers' employment.
In general, experts believe that a complex mix of societal factors - from shifts in eating habits, to greater reliance on cars and increasing hours logged in front of the TV or computer - has been behind the rise in childhood weight problems in recent decades.
Source and thanks to www.stuff.co.nz.
Nigel Denby comments:
Ultimately the thing that makes children overweight is what they are given to eat and how much they are encouraged to exercise. Children of working mothers can of course be a perfectly healthy weight and may indeed benefit from advantages their Mothers extra income brings. If we continue to ignore the fact that most working Mums have to rely on child care while they are at work, and that we refuse to introduce any standrads regarding the food we serve to children in childcare, we are never going to improve the overweight and obesity statistics for young children in the UK. Simply blaming the Mums themselves for going to work is a bit of cop out in my book! It's a bit more complex than that.
