Do working mums harm children's health?

According to the study, children whose mothers work tend to have poorer dietary habits and take part in more sedentary activities, which could contribute to childhood obesity.

However, Dr Sneh Khemka, medical director at Bupa International, warns that the findings of the study are not so clear cut and should not prevent mothers from going back to work.

The researchers, from the UCL Institute of Child Health in the UK, analysed data from more than 12,500 five-year-olds, who took part in the UK Millennium Cohort Study. In the study, the children’s mothers reported information about their working patterns since the birth of their child, as well as about their child’s diet and activity levels.

The analysis of the data took into account certain other factors such as the mother’s ethnicity, socio-economic status, education, age, how many other children there were in the household and household income. The researchers found that after adjustment, children whose mothers worked part-time or full-time were more likely to drink sweetened drinks between meals, watch television or use computers/play electronic games and be driven to school.

Children of mothers who worked full-time were also less likely to snack on fruit or vegetables, compared with other types of food, and were less likely to eat three or more portions of fruit a day. The authors didn’t find an association between whether a mother worked and whether their child took part in organised physical activity for three or more days a week.

The researchers suggest that the results of the study may explain the association between working mothers and childhood obesity that has been seen in previous studies.

However, Dr Khemka cautions against reading too much into the results: “The authors note that the questions asked in the study were only indicators of children’s health behaviours. The authors didn’t look at whether the children who had more of the negative health behaviours studied were actually more obese. Furthermore, this research only looked at children aged five – more studies would be needed to see if the results are similar in older and younger children.”

It’s also worth noting that before the authors adjusted the results to take into account other factors – such as socio-economic status and education – the children of working mothers tended to have healthier habits.

Dr Khemka explained: “This study looked at whether mothers work as an independent factor – but in reality, numerous other factors come into play such as the parents’ background and education. In fact, these other factors are probably more important, which explains why conflicting results were seen when they were taken into account.”

“Parents should be reassured that going out to work doesn’t automatically mean your children will have unhealthy habits. As the authors state themselves, this research isn’t implying that mothers shouldn’t work, but rather that working parents may have more of a challenge in providing their children with healthy opportunities and should be supported in doing so.”

“Many mothers don’t have a choice but to go out to work – and hopefully this study will help by highlighting to parents the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle for their child while they negotiate their work commitments.”

Related information

Childhood obesity factsheet