Working Mothers

[ailbhe]

Those researchers, who said that the children of mothers who work outside the home (that is, most mothers) do less exercise, watch more telly, and eat more junk food than the children of un-paid mothers?

They were SO not in my house today. I outslobbed any nanny-using filofax-waving checkout-clerking mother reliant on paid childcare (availability currently under threat in the UK, by the way) and did almost nothing from The Big Book Of Halcyon 'Fifties Mothering.

Comments

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

Lol - whereas my kid cycles 6 miles every day (plus school games plus playing at the playground after school almost every day), we don't have a telly, and. Err. Well, OK, we did have Chinese takeaway last night and we will go out for pizza tomorrow. Two out of three isn't bad surely :-)

Frustratingly, I have no difficulty in believing that what they found is true on average, as claimed (we're very lucky in the kind of full-time work we both have) but I have great difficulty in working out what could systematically be done about it. I'm running on empty, despite having this nice flexible job and a fantastic DH also with a nice flexible job and enough money and only one kid and... Yet I can't find time and more importantly energy to cook from scratch every day, for example. So it's hardly surprising that many mothers with more difficult situations can't.

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

Hey, not all of us working mothers are reliant on paid childcare :-)

(I know that wasn't your point but the article irritated me for different reasons).

[ailbhe]

I think you'll find that, according to the article, fathers don't exist.

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

Of course, because everyone knows that anything that goes wrong with a child is entirely the mother's fault.

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

My daughter's best friend has 2 working parents & used to go to an all day nursery & now goe sto breakfast club & an after school club. It is besides the point that her mother does all the school runs & takes her to activities & is on the PTFA committee & he dad takes no part in any of this, even though both parents work the same house.

Part of my point is that this child eats better & healthier than Kate, which I think is down to being presented with meals in nursery which she ate or went without. Kate has the opportunity to eat better than she does, but doesn't take it. I hope it's a phase & she'll grow out of it :(