New Research Suggests Working Parents Are Not Focused On Raising Healthy Kids
Many moms today are cursed with having to put in more hours at the office to feed the kids, but a new study suggests that those moms working full-time time jobs to put food on the table are actually not paying close enough attention to their children’s dietary and fitness requirements.
The study conducted by Cornell University took a close look at 25,000 people, and discovered that the working mom is spending 17 fewer minutes in the kitchen, 10 fewer minutes actually dining with her kids, 12 fewer minutes engaged in playful activities and nearly 40 fewer minutes managing their child’s care than stay-at-home moms.
However, we are not just beating up on mothers here. Researchers found that employed dads only devoted about 13 minutes each day to cooking and playing with their kids, while stay-at-home dads spent an average of 41 minutes doing the same.
Researchers also say that working moms are more likely to feed their kids prepackaged meals and fast food than stay at home moms – a practice which could ultimately lead to obesity.
In fact, previous studies found that children growing up in a household with a working mother seem to have higher body mass indexes (BMI) and above average obesity rates than kids growing up with their mothers at home.
According to statistics from a 2003 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that studied families with children between the ages of 3 and 11, moms that worked 10 additional hours a week over the course of a child’s developmental years increased their chances of being overweight up to 1.5 percentage points.
It is worth mentioning that the Cornell study failed to consider the positive benefits from having a working mother in the household, as well as many other factors that could possibly sway its results.
[ABC News]