The study looked at 12,500 five-year-olds, and controlled for factors like socioeconomic status and mothers' education. Researchers found that children of working mothers were more likely to drink soda and eat "crisps and sweets" between meals, and less likely to snack on fruits and vegetables, than their peers with stay-at-home moms. Kids whose mothers worked were also more likely to be driven to school, rather than walking or biking, and more likely to spend two or more hours a day watching TV or using the computer. The effect on kids' eating and exercise habits was less when mothers worked part-time than when they work full-time, but still significant, and in fact, the average employed mom in the study worked only 21 hours a week. According to the Guardian, "flexible working had an impact, but [...] no strong effect on the health of the children."

Study author Catherine Law says, "Our results do not imply that mothers should not work. Rather they highlight the need for policies and programmes to help support parents." But coverage of the study in the British media is sending a more alarmist message. The BBC calls the kids' soda-drinking and TV-watching "health behaviours likely to promote excess weight gain," and cites an earlier study on the same population that found children of working mothers (and, interestingly, children of wealthy parents) have higher obesity risk. The Guardian helpfully illustrates the study with a picture of a pudgy kid eating chips in front of the TV. And the Daily Fail sums up the study thus:

[R]esearchers insist the results 'do not imply that mothers should not work'.

But they say there is a definite link between paid employment and a lifestyle that leaves children more at risk from obesity and disease.

Translation: better stay in the kitchen baking wholesome treats (like the mom in the Daily Mail's accompanying picture), or your kids will get fat and sick. Of course, there's little actual mention of the children's health in the coverage of the study — we don't know if kids of working moms are at higher risk for diabetes, if they have more trouble running a mile, et cetera. We do know that flexible work hours supposedly influenced kids' "unhealthy behaviors" but not their overall health, which is confusing but may indicate that the behaviors of the poor abandoned latchkey kids are less dire than they're made out to be. But if kids' health really does suffer when moms work outside the home, the solution isn't to heap more guilt on moms, who often don't have much choice. Instead, as Law says, parents and kids need better support and facilities to make healthy food and exercise more accessible. The BBC mentions Britain's Change4Life program, which provides education about nutrition and exercise, and sounds like a good start.

The study brings up another question, though. Amid all the headlines like "Working Mums 'Harm Child's Progress'" and "Working Mums' 'Child Weight Risk'" (BBC articles linked from the study coverage), where are those other parents? You know, dads? BBC commenter Naomi says,

I'm cross on so many levels, but mainly a personal one! I work, my husband doesn't, he is our daughter's main carer. He walks her to school, he looks after her after school stuff and cooks her meals every day. She has restricted TV time and is not allowed sweets. Why do people insist on saying 'mother' when they often mean 'parent'. It's wrong on other levels too of course, but for me it's the stupidity of assuming a mum should stay at home and a dad should work - are we still in the 50s?

From the Daily Mail photo, it looks like we are.

Image via Daily Mail.

Working Mothers' Children Unfit [BBC]
Working Mothers Have Unhealthiest Children, Study Finds [Guardian]
Working Mums Beware: Why Children Of Stay-At-Home Mothers Have Healthier Lifestyles [Daily Mail]

The article, by India Knight, seems to be inspired by a British TV special called "The Trouble with Working Women." But Knight spends her entire first page chronicling the dissatisfaction of her working-mom friends. One of these friends, "an ultra-successful, glass-ceiling-busting woman with an enviable job," says of her daughters: "I'd like them to marry rich men and do a little light charity work."

Again and again, women tell night they are unhappy with their lives and that they want something different for their offspring. And although Knight takes a stab at objectivity ("Admittedly, two hard-working, successful individuals wishing nothing more than haut-bourgeois domesticity for their daughters does not exactly constitute a sea change"), her piece still lays the blame for the unhappiness not with an inhumane system that doesn't allow for a balance between work and family, but with women and their choices. Knight writes,

The model we are desperately trying to adhere to - the old 'you can have it all' chestnut - is fundamentally broken and, it increasingly seems, always has been. The great plan for 'equality' didn't work because it never took motherhood and its practical and emotional ramifications properly into account. It is therefore ironic - and possibly quite stupid - that we should still be chasing after it.

It's not a new idea, but it's still infuriating: "having it all," according to Knight, it's impossible not because of lingering sexism or because of capitalism's total lack of a concept of work-life balance, but because motherhood is somehow emotionally incompatible with having a job.

Things get even worse when Knight starts quoting women's shelter founder Erin Pizzey, a contributor to "The Trouble with Working Women." Pizzey says, "There has been a subterranean war between men and women which has largely been won by women, who don't understand what they've lost." She goes on:

The traditional family has been going for thousands of years and it works. What I see now is men disenfranchised from their roles and women who are lost because they have to work full-time. They don't have a choice: there's no proper provision for children.

And on:

Of course, some women can do it - some women can have it all. But they are a tiny, tiny minority. The great myth was that men would get feminised and everything would change. Yes, you now get men pushing prams and so on. But 99% of the work still falls on a woman's shoulders and that is simply a fact.

This kind of gender essentialism and historical oversimplification hurts women and families far more than any job ever did. The idea that women historically have always been able to stay "home" with their children, the idea that men who are no longer breadwinners become "disenfranchised," the idea that the work of making it home and raising children is naturally female and that men would have to be feminized in order to do it: all of these keep us from making real provisions to help parents work and raise their kids, because they promote the false premise that the real problem is women trying to work in the first place. Essentialists like Pizzey forget not only that gender roles have never been completely cut and dried, but also that culture is as important to parenting as biology, and culture has been and can be changed.

At the end of her article, Knight does reject the marry-a-rich-man solution. Instead, she says, women should plan out their lives better. But it would be much fairer — for women and for men — if the working world would plan how to better accommodate families. To say that this is never going to happen, and that women just need to accept their lot in life, is to admit defeat.

Having it all is a myth girls, so just make sure your daughters marry rich men [Times of London]

Yeah, same old issues. But a new study by UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business found that MBAs were more likely to drop out of the workforce than doctors or lawyers. Why?

It's not because of education: All of the 1,000 participants in the survey went to Harvard. It's not age: All were 37 years old and had at least one child. The difference was in the workplace. A third of the women with MBAs became stay-at-home moms; compared to 6% of MDs. Could it be that doctors often work in private practice and can make their own hours? Could it be that a business environment is not family-friendly? Would it help if there were more women in business, thereby forcing companies to become flexible or lose valuable employees? But why would more women go into business when clearly women in business have a tough time? It's a catch-22. (Would some sort of Title IX help?) I'm reminded of something I read recently, in which the author suggested that the reason the comments on this site are so witty and funny is because women are underutilized at their jobs. Maybe it's not just businesses — maybe the entire concept of a "workforce" needs to be overhauled?

Working Moms Look Back With Mixed Emotions [CNN]
More Women With MBAs Take Mommy-Track Than Doctors: Study [Reuters]

Related: Government Officials: Should Title IX Apply To Science Departments?
On Jezebel's Fine Lines Series and Spunky Female Protagonists [South In The Winter]

Earlier: Many Women Prefer Stay At Home Motherhood To Soulless Cubicle Dwelling

Some companies discriminate against women who have, or will have, children. Kiki Peppard, a 53-year-old switchboard operator, tells Guardian she was rejected from 19 job interviews in a row because she was a single mother. And research backs her up: A recent US shows that mothers are 79% less likely to be hired than non-mothers with equal employment experience. But some women feel like when working moms need to take care of their motherhood duties, their office duties get dumped on those without children.

In Marie Claire's "Cubicle Coach" column, a reader writes, "I get that juggling parenting responsibilities and work is tough, but I shouldn't have to pick up the slack for my overextended colleagues, should I?" The Cubicle Coach claims that "Those with kids use the workday more efficiently than most." I ever so respectfully call bullshit! I have definitely worked with slacker moms and hardworking singles (as well as slacker singles and hardworking moms). But usually, everyone is working hard and stretched too thin. If you're single, don't employers assume you can work more, because, what else are you doing? But if you work and have kids — basically two full-time jobs — isn't it only right that you take advantage of any chance to make your flesh and blood a priority?

Single Women's Overtime Burden,
Mothers Need Not Apply [Guardian]
Why Do Working Moms Get the Perks? [Marie Claire]

Earlier: Are Childless Women Hostile To Working Moms?

On the UK feminist blog The F Word, Louise Livesey responds: "The report admonish(es) women for behaving like, well like ambitious men..." Of the 52% of moms who would rather blame the alarm clock than their kids, she says:"We generally have to explain lateness to bosses and bosses tend to be men... this isn't a woman-woman problem but that workplaces are not accommodating to parenting at all."

It's hard to know how to feel about all this. Women should be supporting women, obviously. But as a childless woman who worked with — and for — women with children, I often felt jealous of colleagues/bosses who would leave work to go pick up kids or attend dance recitals. Sometimes I felt like I was being punished for not reproducing, because while mom was out of the office delivering cupcakes, guess who was picking up the slack? But it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation — working moms who don't go to school plays and class birthday parties can feel punished for reproducing, or worse — heartlessly ambitious and neglectful (are dads ever scrutinized so closely?).

The one thing in the story that did resonate with me however, was this quote:

The report paints a picture of women undermining and undercutting each other, vying for advancement and sometimes filled with resentment.

Childless Women 'Hostile To Working Mums' [Telegraph]
Women Blamed For Being Ambitious [The F Word]

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