Fat Kids, Working Moms: Link Looms Large
The evidence is in; now we can believe what anybody with eyes even half-open can see. American children are fat -- and getting fatter.
“Among children and teens age 6 to 19, 15% (almost 9 million) are overweight according to 1999-2000 data, or triple what the proportion was in 1980,” reported the Department of Health and Human Services.
The child-fat problem is all too real, as is the suffering, both physical and psychological, endured by many overweight children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites a dramatic increase in obesity-linked hospitalizations for children: twice the diabetes diagnoses, a fivefold rise in sleep apnea cases and the tripling of gall bladder disease admissions, all in the last two decades. Hypertension is increasing among children and so is asthma, both of which are arguably tied to fat.
One favorite culprit at the moment is fast food. Yet as the recent dismissal of a class-action lawsuit against McDonald’s suggests, this corporate-brainwashing argument has its limits. Maybe Americans are not wallowing zombie-like to the trough. Perhaps fast-food executives and others unable to ignore our capacious appetites are simply engaged in business as usual, trying to keep the customers (with apologies) fat and happy.
An even more popular explanation for the child-fat explosion is heredity. The appeal of this theory is obvious: If kids are “wired” to be fat, then it’s no one’s fault when they turn out that way. Yet a recent report in the Annals of Internal Medicine notes that “people born in 1964 who became obese did so about 25% to 27% faster than those born in 1957.” Genetics alone cannot explain such an increase. Nor can today’s ready availability of food. There was plenty to eat in 1957.
The real question is not how children get fat, but why. And as much as we want to blame fast food, heredity or some other influence, this is something for families to deal with. Historically, parents (and extended family) have controlled what, when and how much children ate. Our world, in which unsupervised children are allowed to choose their own food, is relatively new, as is the child-fat explosion.
This is, of course, a divisive line of thought -- and for some, a painful one. Many mothers work because they must. And those who can choose often feel they and their families benefit from their decision to work outside the home. Still, though it may be sexist and unfair, the link between absent mothers and overweight children is increasingly difficult to deny.
This is true not only in the United States. A 1999 study of obese Japanese 3-year-olds identified “the mother’s job” as the environmental factor contributing most to child obesity. The nations of Europe, as well as Canada and Australia, all report significant increases in child heaviness in the last few decades, a time in which mothers increasingly have left home for work.
In a related finding, the British journal Lancet, reporting on a study of 32,200 Scottish children, found that “breast-feeding is associated with a modest reduction in childhood obesity risk.” Babies who are fed human milk, the study found, don’t get fat as often as those who are put on formula; bottle-feeding gets milk into a child much faster than does breast-feeding.
Then there is the issue of childhood exercise, which is also obviously related to parental supervision. For many children who return to an empty home, those hours between the end of school and nightfall are virtually guaranteed to be sedentary. What “caring for self” after school frequently means is returning home, locking the door and spending the afternoon snacking and watching TV or playing video games.
It will be objected that more needs to be said about fathers and that mothers are being unfairly burdened. But it is mothers more than other adults in children’s lives who feel the need to police what children eat and to get them to eat what they should. Here, as elsewhere, life is unfair. But we do not improve the prospects of overweight kids by pretending otherwise.
