And what is wrong with this paragraph?
[Patricia Anderson, Kristin Butcher, and Phillip Levine have] suggested that two-income families may be producing the problem. They find that children are fatter if their mothers work longer hours. This is true even within families: The sibling who spent more time as a latchkey child will tend to be the fatter one, perhaps because the mother is less able to supervise outdoor play or has less time to cook and therefore buys more fast food. Unfortunately for working mothers who are already struck by guilt, the effects are pretty substantial. A mere 10 hours at work raises the chance of childhood obesity by 1.3 percentage points, which is about 10 percent.
It couldn’t be high fructose corn syrup, or the high reliance on single family vehicles for transportation. It couldn’t be the rise in sedentary lifestyles or that poor people are priced out of buying non-processed food. It couldn’t be about preferring video games to riding a bicycle or that our culture is heavily centered around food. It couldn’t be about getting inadequate sleep or the use of medications that make us sluggish and slow our metabolisms. No, it couldn’t even be about busy families or even, god forbid, working dads.
No, it’s mom’s fault. For earning a paycheck. Surely a trio of economists know even two-income families are struggling these days. Right? Right.
No social agenda here.
UPDATE: Paragraph removed because Wolfa rightly called out my poor reading comprehension skills.
I knew it was the mothers! Damn you, Mom, for working! You made me fat!
What a stupid article, with, as you pointed out, no real social critique, only social blaming.
Repeat after me: Correlation does not imply causation.
Our culture isn’t centred on food, exactly — it’s not centred on sitting and enjoying food in company. It does approve of ‘food as gift’ or ‘food as comfort’, though. And of course ‘food as shame’.
And Lauren, please. It’s not about working Dads because Dads aren’t supposed to ever make the food, that’s the job for the Mom.
But the “even within families” meant: within one particular family (where the mother started or stopped working between kids), not comparing one family to another. It’s probably the only non-objectionable part of the article.
Ha, wolfa. You’re right about that last paragraph. Poor reading skills when outrage meter is off the scales.
I do, however, believe that our culture is in many wasy focused on (or “centered on”) food.
Name a problem in America and it’s always a woman’s fault. I don’t even know why we make note of it anymore.
Wow, why is this the new cause du jour? You’re making great points here. And is it wrong that I read the second name as “Ashton Kutcher?” Whoops.