Working dads to blame for childhood obesity

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta is bravely weighing the evidence that working moms are to blame for the rise in childhood obesity:

CHETRY: This just another case of blame mom for everything? Could working mothers be responsible for kids getting fatter? Well, it's a controversial theory that Doctor Sanjay Gupta takes a look at in today's "Fit Nation" report.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, good morning, Kiran. I was a little -- talk about blaming women. I have to be a little careful here.

Women have been blamed for everything going back to the Garden of Eden for sure. But we're taking a look at some -- some people believe that working mothers may actually be contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic. We decided to take a look at this controversial theory.

     (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

     SINGER:  Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin' --

GUPTA (voice over): Working 9 to 5 was a movie and a mantra in the 1980s, as American women entered the workforce en masse. That's about the same time that American kids started packing on the pounds.

TERRY MASON, CHICAGO PUBLIC HEALTH COMMISSIONER: We saw that started to happen and you could track childhood obesity and there was a direct correlation.

GUPTA: So, did working women lead to chubbier children? Well, 16 percent of children six and older are overweight. That is triple the number from 1980.

LEW FULLER, OBESITY SOCIETY: We don't have the traditional approach of a woman being at home, cooking dinner, taking care of the kids, getting the kids outside and getting the kids exercise.

     GUPTA:  Families now eat out an average of four times a week, a big jump from 30 years ago.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Being a working mom, I do find myself taking my children out to McDonald's and fast food a lot because when I get back after the commute, I'm too tired to fix those meals.

     UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  I think that blaming women for childhood obesity is absolutely ridiculous.

     GUPTA:  Others say obesity may be caused by a variety of factors. [CNN]

This item is a classic example of how the media use "science" journalism to spin sexist homilies.

Let's assume for the sake of argument children are more likely to become obese if they eat a lot of restaurant food. Let's also assume that children in two-parent families are more likely to eat out several times a week if both parents work.

According to the CNN item, the average family eats out four nights a week. So, what does the average family do on the other three nights? Working mothers probably already do most of this home cooking. Aha! Working dads aren't stepping up to provide their share of healthy home-cooked meals.

Of course, these gender-based blame games are stupid. For most families, work is not a choice, it's a necessity. If we want to understand the rise in childhood obesity, we could start by asking why so many people are working more and more, and making less and less. We could ask why our cities are so poorly laid out that parents are wasting hours in traffic that could have been spent with their kids. We could discuss why low wages and long hours are making people too busy to cook and too broke to subsist on anything besides fast food. We could talk about how advertising companies brainwash kids into demanding cartoon-emblazoned kiddie junk food from their tired parents.

But those discussions might offend CNN's corporate sponsors. It's much easier just to dump on women. CNN is twisting data to fit the schema of a 1950s sitcom where Dad works because it's a Natural Law and Mom works for selfish personal fulfillment.

Update: Zuzu's talking sense.

Comments

[S/100/30]

I was astonished by how bad this segment was when I first saw it a few days ago at cnn.com. When I first say the headline, I assumed they would look at a correlation between two-working parent households and childhood obesity and jump to a causation conclusion, which would have been bad enough.

But all they did was look at a decade-scale correlation between increased numbers of women in the workforce and childhood obesity? Seriously!?

But how do we know that fewer pirates aren't to blame?

[davis]

I remember some TV preacher claiming a direct correlation between taking prayer out of school and rising crime rates.

Anytime you hear a claim beginng with "some people", it's best to tune out.

[Alan Bostick]

Oh, horsepuckey. Everyone knows that it's Farm subsidies that cause childhood obesity.

[Phl Christian]

Obesity is an epidemic of ignorance. It really is that simple to define. Pointing fingers at genders and/or environmental influences won't solve the problem - better education will. If moms, dads and kids had a better understanding of the consequences which result from making unhealthy choices, I am certain there would be fewer unhealthy choices made. Obesity can be prevented, but not until we become better educated on how to live a healthier lifestyle. That's going to require some innovative thinking, passionate leadership and a serious commitment from all stakeholders. BUT - it can be done!
http://getfitkids.blogspot.com/

[Alon Levy]

Let me get it straight. Sweden, where both men and women work at higher rates than in the US, has an obesity rate of about 10%, compared to 23% in the US. That rate is about the same as in many other European countries with vastly different levels of poverty, labor participation, working time, and unemployment - France, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Belgium, and Turkey all have obesity rates within 2.5% of Sweden's. That's about the lowest rate there is in developed countries; Japan and Korea are both at 3% officially, but East Asians become obese at a BMI of 27 or 28 while the OECD-wide definition is based on a cutoff of 30.

A good rule of thumb is that if your theory of obesity fails to explain why the US is the fattest nation in the world, you should look for another.

[Alon Levy]

Oh, and I'm going to go against the grain here and predict that in the US, two-income families are correlated with less obesity, not more. I haven't seen data on this, but in the US two-income families tend to be better off than one-income families.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Obviously, it's silly to think that working parents cause obesity.

Still, it's quite plausible to posit a link between excessive consumption of fast- and convenience foods and weight gain in children. Restaurant meals tend to be higher in fat and calories than home-cooked meals. People consume more calories when they're eating out than when they eat at home. There's conflicting evidence about whether eating in non-fast food restaurants is associated with weight gain, or whether it's a fast food related phenomenon. Of course, eating a lot of fast food is correlated with other economic and lifestyle factors. If you can afford to eat out 4 nights a week in non-fast food restaurants, you may have other advantages as well.

[Alon Levy]

Well, traditional restaurants do tend to outcalorie fast food joints. A meal at an American steakhouse, consisting of a 12-ounce steak and fries, can get on the far side of 2,000 calories. In comparison, French steakhouses tend to have few red meat options, often restricting themselves to the filet mignon, which is the most fat-free steak; in addition, their serving sizes tend to be smaller.

But, of course, there's the question of neighborhood obesity rates. The highest obesity rates in New York are in neighborhoods where people can't afford eating at steakhouses. Hell, I can't with any degree of regularity, and I make more than twice the poverty level. The Upper East Side, where I imagine residents often go eat fancy steaks, has an obesity rate of maybe 7%; the South Bronx is closer to 30%.

[aeroman]

I haven't seen data on this, but in the US two-income families tend to be better off than one-income families.

Do you really think this is a stat you can just guess at based on your experience? I've lived in the U.S. for nearly a quarter-century, in four states (and a federal distict), with a lot of variation in class surrounding, yet I have no idea if this is true.

[Alon Levy]

Do you really think this is a stat you can just guess at based on your experience?

No, it's a stat I can guess based on census bureau data about the average number of earners per household in each income group of households. It goes up from less than 1 in the lowest groups to just over 2 among households making close to or more than $100,000/year.

The stat I'm guessing is obesity.

[aeroman]

I'll add that it doesn't really make a huge amount of economic sense to call BOTH single-parent families AND two-parent, single-wage-earner families "single income families." The non-wage partner in a two-partner single-wage family does have income - it's just very hard to account for because it's disbursed informally and they share a tax return (and likely a bank account) with the person doing the disbursing.

This isn't a feminist, or anti-feminist, or pro- or anti-stay-at-home argument - it's just a basic economic fact. If I were the sole proprietor of a company, and I employed my spouse for a salary, no one would dispute that she had an income, despite the fact that our net income is the same as it would be if she didn't work (and I didn't hire a replacement for her salried position). The fact that it's an intra-couple transfer, so her income gain is an income loss for me, doesn't make it not income for her. It just means that mine is less an they offset.

Non-wage-earning spouses pay rent, feed thsemselves, buy clothes, buy gas, etc with something. How is that something not income?

[aeroman]

Got it, Alon. Thanks for clearing up the ambiguity from your initial statement.

I'm still not sure if the figures you're referring to support your statement, though, because I don't know what you mean by the "lowest groups". But if you're, say, comparing households with a less than 20k/yr income to households with a 100k+/yr income, your comparison isn't going to tell you whether single-wage-earning households "tend" to have more money, becuase a) you're not accounting for the entire population in the middle and b) you're not accounting for the actual size of the groups you're talking about.

Plus, you're conflating household income with being "better off," which doesn't make sense, because it completely falls apart for households without children. A single-person household with an income of 50k/yr isn't "worse off" than a two-person household with an income of 75k/yr. You can't make a judgment of individual well-being by only comparing household income without comparing household makeup.

Plus, you're using figures for number of wage-earners and focusing on the lowest group, which includes the large number of households with no wage-earners at all. But no one disputes that economic well-being typically goes down when a household moves from one to zero wage-earners. They're irrelevant to the comparison you're getting at, but you're using numbers that they've clearly significantly influenced.

[Alon Levy]

It's income, but it's not based on wages. American households making under $10,000 a year average a third of an income earner not because two thirds of them have zero income, but because of chronic unemployment, and income derived from sources other than wages, such as welfare and help from relatives.
The following things increase with household income:
- Household size
- The number of wage earners
- The number of wage earners divided by household size
- Household income per wage earner
The example you give is an extreme one that is only an option for a small minority of households. Middle- and upper-middle class families don't generally own businesses; to them, if one parent stops working, it means a serious reduction in family income.

[aeroman]

Sorry, but adding: I was fuzzy in my statement regarding how poorly your assumptions handle children. The point I made there was really more about unmarrieds than kids - I got my wires crossed.

But your conflation of household calculated income with being "better off" also struggles with children. A single-wage-earner, two-parent household with one child and a yearly calculated income of 75k is actually much, much better off economically than a two-wage-earner, two-parent household with one child and a yearly calculated income of 75k. The first family has the entirety of the non-wage-earning parent's labor to devote to child care, whereas the second family will have to pay for similar services out of the 75k.

[julia]

or maybe we could talk about why during the hours in which the state has the kids in their life-loving hands they're feeding the kids crap because they aren't given enough money to buy healthy food and then selling the kids more (corporate-sponsored) crap because they need to fundraise to support the unfunded mandates of NCNB.

Or maybe they should just let the kids get some exercise during the day, like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC say they should. And a goodly number don't. And not a single state says they have to. Even though it significantly improves student behavior and achievement and (the AHA says) decreases lifetime healthcare spending.

Far be it from me to suggest that perhaps ignoring known solutions that might require a government program to serve its constituents in favor of blaming mom for not fitting Mrs. Cleaver duty into her two-job day might demonstrate a bit of an agenda.

[Alon Levy]

Also, what I say is true at all levels. You can ignore people in poverty if you want. In the $30-40k bracket, the average number of earners is about 1.2, and the average household size is 2.4. That works out to around $28,000 per earner and $14,000 per household member. In the $50-60 bracket, the numbers are 1.57, 2.72, $35,000, and $20,000 respectively. In the $90-100 bracket, they're roughly 2, 3.2, $47,000, and $29,000 respectively.

So what's happening isn't what you say in the last example. The typical comparison isn't between a two-income family making $75,000 a year and a one-income family of the same size making $75,000. Those two aren't equally well-off, as you note, which is why I'm using the income per wage earner metric. Rather, the typical comparison involves a two-income family making $75,000 and a one-income family making $30,000. Even if the two-income family has three members and the one-income one has only two, the former is better off without a doubt (for what it's worth, it's better off even if the latter is just one person; a three-person household needs to pay less than three times as much rent as a single person).

[Arun]

As per this, food insecurity is correlated with obesity.

[aeroman]

Alon, the example I gave wasn't supposed to represent anyone, it was just an extreme (but simple) example to illustrate that we don't have a general rule against calling intra-marriage transfers income, so we shouldn't pretend that unemployed spouses don't have income - it's just that their uncalculated income is equal to an uncalculated loss for their spouse.

The point is that raw calculated income =/= well-being, because it doesn't fully reflect household assets. Household income-per-member is certainly a much better figure than the one you initially used, but it still misses the labor value I just mentioned. That's why various individuals or organizations will try to use imputed income figures, which would include things like imputed rent from homehowning and imputed wages from performing labor for yourself that could otherwise be performed by someone else for pay, or that you could perform for someone else for pay.

The problem with imputed income is that it's difficult and controversial to calculate. But if it could be done well, it would be a much better - though still not perfect - measurement of economic well-being. The difficulty here is that the choice you're getting at - the stay-at-home/don't-stay-at home - requires imputed domestic wage income to make an accurate comparison. Stay-at-home parenting is the choice to convert a household member's labor from going toward traditionally calculable income to difficult-to-calculate imputable income from domestic labor. You can't just plug up your ears to that and pretend you're making an actual income calculation.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept of imputed labor income, think about it like this. Imagine that Aeroman A earned 100k a year and spent 25k on an assistant to manage his bills, etc. You'd still consider his income to be 100k, because census data doesn't deduct personal spending from income. Now imagine Aeroman B just decided to work fewer hours, make 75k, but do all that assistant-y household work himself. Aeroman B's claculated census income would be 75% of Aeroman A's, but they're actually exactly equally well-off as an economic matter. That's why some economists would include 25k of imputed labor income from Aeroman B's household labor in his income calculation - it makes income a better indicator.

Your conclusion may actually still ultimately reflect reality even considering domestic labor, and your further explanation has certainly supported it a good deal more, though, so thanks.

[Jill Bains]

"A good rule of thumb is that if your theory of obesity fails to explain why the US is the fattest nation in the world, you should look for another." -(Alon Levy)

Looking for another, one can only postulate that the vast American wish for death starts with the body closest to home. The American demand and penchant for total death of all kinds, either by military terror or caloric terror spares no victims. Murder, by any means possible, perversely whether by grotesque over consumption for the lower classes or selective starvation for those more privileged seeking the eroticism of thinness, the effect and the provenance is the same.

The upscale stylization of food as a beauty accessory, where aestheticized food not only confers values of taste, but purchases the necessary social separation, is now a necessary fait accompli for the American upper classes.

Hip and very 'cool' oxtails, (to be braised in $400.00 Le Cruset.) sold by dilettante farmers at the local 'Farmers' market for $18.00 a pound next to sexy plum for $2.00 a piece. And no, they don't take food stamps.

The cultural grotesquerie of the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market has accomplished the wondrous feat of social engineering: Creating a 'Gated Community' without the Gate. Just as the less privileged know in advance they do not shop there or eat the exquisite food (even if the oxtail's were $0.25 #), they know they must eat garbage. Humiliation levied with every bite as chronic necessity.Built in ethnic cleansing and murder immolated in the fat of bad food cheered on by the elites. Organic food in America as murder weapon with the perennially perfect alibi.

All over the city, only people of good conscience, wake to the deliriously comforting,socially beneficent dreams, of the Ferry Plaza Market consumed in flames, along with the private colleges which graduated the ersatz farmers.

[Stefan Lorimer]

If there truly is a link between paternal child care and obesity, I would guess that it would have something to do with an increased exposure to plastics and compounds from packaging used for convenient pre-packed foods.

If you are interested in knowing more on this I suggest reading this article. http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/health-fitness/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we_2_printer.shtml

[Alon Levy]

Looking for another, one can only postulate that the vast American wish for death starts with the body closest to home.

Right, because killing people is a uniquely American habit, which is unknown in Japan and Germany and France.

[aeroman]

Every time Jill comments, I want her to start a co-blog with an equally melodramatic conservative - a Josh Trevino or someone. It would be hilarious!

[dirk]

You women always "messing" things up.
Why can't you just stay in the kitchen,raise the kids and serve your man:)
as god "intended"...

[joejoejoe]

This is entirely unscientific but I was out and about today and very thirsty and stopped in to a convenience store to get a drink. The best value was the super gigundo gulp (40 oz. fountain soda) and even though I try to limit my soda and empty calories I got one and gulped it down to quench my thirst.

Do 'supersize' drinks exist in Europe? I think part of the empty calories that people consume come out of a desire to get the best value. If a medium popcorn at the movies is $3 and super humongous popcorn is $3.50 many otherwise sane and responsible eaters will get the super humongous tub out of a desire to be a smart consumer, not a glutton.

[David]

Ok I am usually the first one to jump on women about this kind of crap, but I do believe that women had help in creating the child so why shouldn't the father be blamed as well!