Fat: a middle-class issue

Middle-class mothers who work long hours increase the risk of their offspring being overweight or obese, according to an astonishing new study.

Research revealed by The Independent on Sunday for the first time will turn perceived wisdom on its head with the revelation that the nation's higher-paid working mothers bear much of the responsibility for the country's ticking obesity time bomb, and not the poorer working-class families who are usually blamed.

More shockingly, the risk of childhood obesity soars in direct correlation with family income. Children in families where household income is greater than £33,000 are significantly more likely to be overweight or obese than youngsters from families with the lowest incomes, the new study shows. And in higher income households, the longer a mother worked each week, the greater the risk of the child being overweight.

"Long hours of maternal employment, rather than lack of money, may impede young children's access to healthy foods and physical activity," say the researchers from the Institute of Child Health at University College London (UCL) and Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh), writing in the International Journal of Obesity this week.

Children from families with incomes of £22,000 to £33,000 were 10 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese than children from families in the lowest income group, the study found. "For every 10 hours a mother worked, children from households with an annual income of £22,000 or higher were more likely to be overweight than children from the lowest income group," researchers wrote.

Where the annual income was £33,000 or more, children from those households were 15 per cent more likely to be overweight than children from the lowest income group.

Compounding the misery for working mothers, the study found that children's weight problems got worse if mothers relied on a nanny to hold the fort while they pursued their careers. Children in childcare are 24 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese than children cared for by their mother or her partner.

The UCL/Gosh research links the explosion in childhood obesity with the rise in women going out to work, particularly those with young children. In 1984, 27 per cent of women with children under five in the UK were employed, while in 2004, 59 per cent of married or cohabiting women and 34 per cent of lone parents were employed. No link was found between the hours worked by the father or partner and weight problems.

The findings have dismayed health experts. Dr Susan Jebb, head of nutrition and health at the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Research, said: "Obesity is something that affects middle-class families as well, and that's important because many people take it to be an issue which only affects low-income groups and it is absolutely not the case. This is a wake-up call for middle-class families and it will hopefully get them to engage with the problem."

Dr Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: "I do not wish to condemn these women but I do think the priority has to be the health of the child and its continued health into adulthood. We are in danger of raising a generation of young people with a much shorter life expectancy than previous generations."

He warned: "If women are going back to work early after having children they are unlikely to be breast-feeding up to the recommended six months and the babies will go on to formula milk. If women are working there will be less time for food preparation and more resorting to convenience food. The types of food children are snacking on are going to be energy-dense and there will be more sedentary hours than activity hours."

The rights and wrongs of working mothers provoke powerful emotions on both sides and many websites have forums where some mothers extol the virtues of returning to work while others would not even consider spending time away from their children.

Writing on Mumsnet.com, a mother who goes by the user name Meeely2 says: "I work full time because I have to. My children are therefore at nursery five days a week. If I was home I would be washing, cooking, ironing, cleaning. Would I really be sitting with my kids all day teaching them to read, play nicely, share, have manners etc?"

A stay-at-home mother, HedTwigg, countered: "I did go back to work after my son was born and really didn't feel much like a mother. We decided that I would stop working to see if that felt right – and it did. I sincerely believe that my children are happier and more secure for having a parent at home."

And for happier and more secure, read thinner and healthier as well, according to the UCL and Gosh researchers.

"We found that children were more likely to be overweight at age three if their mother held any employment since their birth," they wrote of their study, adding that the results could be generalised to the UK population. Dishing up the biggest blame for the richest strata of society, they added: "Children's likelihood of being overweight increased with the number of hours their mother worked per week. However, this relationship was only significant for children from families with the highest household income level. Our results found that maternal work intensity was associated with childhood overweight only among families in the highest income groups."

These findings suggest that long hours of maternal employment rather than lack of money may impede young children's access to healthy foods and physical activity. For example, parental time constraints could increase a child's consumption of snack foods and increase television use.

The main aim of the study was to investigate relationships between employment and excessive weight in children aged three. In the study, which was based on a nationally representative sample of 13,113 children, the researchers looked at data from interviews with parents when the child was aged nine months and separate interviews when they reached three years of age. The child's height and weight were measured at nine months and at three. Out of all the mothers, 7,629 worked an average of 22 hours a week and had worked for an average of 27 months since the birth of their child.

The findings show the scale of the challenge the Government faces to hit its target of halting the rise of obesity in under-11s by 2010. Almost one in seven children (13.4 per cent) aged between two and 10 is obese, an increase of a third in a decade. The proportion of obese under-16s is predicted to reach 20 per cent by 2010 if nothing is done. The Department of Health recently warned that the obesity crisis would afflict nearly a third of the population by 2010.

One mother of four, Caroline Silver, 43, who works full-time as a marketing and advertising executive, jumped to defend her family's lifestyle. "I don't think that working mothers feed their kids less well than mums that stay at home. I'm actually better at organising what the kids eat when I'm working. I plan meals rather than just thinking, 'I'll sort it out later.'" Despite her best endeavours, one of her four children, Zoe, 16, is overweight: 11 stone on her 5ft 1in frame is two stone too much. Zoe has been struggling to shift the weight for the past six years, attending an eight-week residential weight-loss course in Leeds every summer since she was 10 in the hope of learning healthy, balanced eating.

Zoe is candid about why she is overweight. "I don't eat anything for breakfast. I usually get up too late. If I'm hungry at school I'll snack on crisps; then for lunch I'll go to the canteen and get something like a chicken mayo baguette and chips. I'm always hungry when I get in from school so I'll snack on bread or make myself a sandwich before my mum, who gets in at six, cooks something like spaghetti for everyone."

Ian Carter, programme director for Wellspring UK, a weight-loss camp for children and teenagers, says it is too simplistic just to blame working middle-class mothers for the crisis. "Obesity is a nationwide epidemic that affects people from all different backgrounds and is not just a middle-class issue affecting those with working mothers. In our experience it goes right across the board." He added that the boot camp's intake this year had trebled since last summer, with most of the intake coming from families with middle-class backgrounds. But he qualified this as being "mainly because they are families that can afford to send their children to our camp".

And Michael Scanlan, speaking for the Family and Parenting Institute, defended mothers' right to work. "For many parents working is not a choice, it is a necessity. While research like this is very valid it can make parents feel guilty about the choices that they have to make and it's unfortunate when that happens. There are ways that we can look at beating this problem, like having more after-school clubs and more high-quality and affordable childcare."

The issue of whether to stay at home with their young children or go out to work perplexes even celebrities. Mother-to-be Myleene Klass, the singer and model who is due to give birth to her first baby in September, said: "At the same time I know a lot of working mums and pregnant women that are working hard and doing their best to build a future for their families and I want to stay as true to that as possible.''

Carol Smillie, 44, the former Changing Rooms presenter who is a mother of three, has come up with a compromise: no paid work at weekends. "I have turned down huge amounts of money with corporate jobs because I never work weekends. That's always been my ground rule, and I'm pleased with myself for sticking to it. The kids are not at school weekends and they want me here. That won't last for long, so I think it's really important to be at home now."

Dr Michele Elliott of Kidscape said:"The causative factor here has to be poor parenting regardless of whether you are working or not working."

Additional reporting Jonathan Owen and Rachel Shields

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