A recent study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health claims to show that when socio-economic status, age, and ethnicity are taken into account, children from households where a mother works are more likely to be driven to school, to watch more TV, consume more sweet drinks and eat fewer portions of fruit and vegetables than those households where the mother stays at home.
And sadly, the British media has jumped all over these results with misleading headlines like 'Working Mothers Have Unhealthiest Children', 'Working Mothers Children Unfit', or this gem from the Mirror that represents a new acme in ignorant reasoning: 'Working Mums' Kids are Fatter and Lazier'.
Why is it that working mothers are being singled out in the headlines when there are a range of factors that contribute to kids with health problems or poor diets?
Well, what these headlines indicate is that there is a disturbing gender politics at play that is keen to direct both contempt and rage at mothers who work because they do not conform to traditional perceptions of 'normal' gender roles. The utility of this study for these conservative social forces is that it supposedly provides 'scientific' evidence that working mothers are 'bad moms' and therefore reinforces antiquated notions that a woman's proper place is in the home, raising her children.
However, there is a fatal flaw in the study that completely undermines these results and their popular interpretation. The researchers did not record whether the households were single parent, nuclear, mixed, reconstitutional, or multi-generational in composition. In other words, it may be that fathers or other carers, by their absence or by their presence due to work and/or other reasons, also play an important role in the health of children.
Moreover, looking at family composition might draw attention to the significance of the current structural inequalities of the British economy including the necessity of double-income households in some areas, poor public support for single-mothers, general increases in working hours, norms against flexible working hours, expectations regarding who should stay home to parent children, marked gender disparities in pay, weakened trade unions, inadequate and unaffordable child care options outside of school hours, and their corresponding effects.
But of course, it is far easier to just blame working mothers than it is to blame capitalism...
Photo credit: buridan
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