Does mothers' employment affect adolescents' weight and activity levels? Improving our empirical estimates

Abstract

Women’s lives are marked by complex work and family routines — routines that have implications for their children’s health. Prior research suggests a link between mothers' work hours and their children’s weight, but few studies investigate the child health implications of increasingly common work arrangements, such as telecommuting and flexible work schedules. We examine whether changes in mothers’ work arrangements are associated with changes in adolescents’ weight, physical activity, and sedentary behavior using longitudinal data and fixed effects models to better account for mothers’ social selection in to different work arrangements and children’s underlying preferences. With data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 10,518), we find that changes in mothers’ work arrangements are not significantly associated with adolescents’ weight gain or physical activity but are significantly associated with adolescents’ sedentary behavior. Adolescents’ sedentary behavior declines when mothers become more available after school and increases when mothers work more hours or become unemployed. In sum, after accounting for unobserved, stable traits, including mothers’ selection into jobs with more or less flexibility, mothers’ work arrangements are most strongly associated with adolescents’ sedentary behavior.

Assessing the Impact of Changes in Household Socioeconomic Status on the Health of Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review

“…Results from the three studies assessing mental health outcomes and the one study assessing adolescent sedentary health behaviors support the first mechanism. There is a generally consistent pattern in these papers that parental transitions into employment are associated with decreased mental health issues and improved health behaviors while transitions into unemployment are associated with the inverse (Bubonya et al 2017 ; Chase-Lansdale et al 2003 ; Martin et al 2018 ; Moustgaard et al 2018 ). However, there was variation between these studies in which parent’s employment, mother’s or father’s, was significantly associated with child/adolescent mental health.…”

“…Two found that increasing maternal work hours or employment between infancy and childhood/adolescence was associated with increases in child/adolescent BMI (Ettinger et al 2018 ; Jones 2018 ), and one of the two also found paternal employment was associated with decreases in a child’s BMI trajectory (Jones 2018 ). Of the three studies, only one suggested that changes in maternal employment were not associated with overweight/obesity, although this study was restricted to adolescents (Martin et al 2018 ). All three studies were conducted in the U.S.…”

“…The four papers that assessed the relationship between SES changes and child/adolescent exercise behaviors, also revealed no generalizable patterns. In the U.S., adolescent sedentary behavior was found to increase among children exposed to recurrent poverty (Min et al 2018 ) or maternal unemployment (Martin et al 2018 ). However, in a Brazilian study, upward income trajectories were associated with an increase in inactive transport use and downward trajectories were associated with the opposite (Hallal et al 2012 ).…”

“…In the remaining four outcome categories, anthropometric measurements, socio-emotional behavior, dental health, and cognition/development, the relationship between employment transitions and child health is less clear. The limited evidence from the three studies evaluating the effect of parental employment on anthropometric measurements seems to suggest that increased maternal employment is associated with subsequent increases in BMI, supporting the second mechanism, while increased paternal employment is associated with decreases in BMI (Ettinger et al 2018 ; Jones 2018 ; Martin et al 2018 ). Similarly, two studies on children’s socio-emotional behavior found that increased maternal employment was associated with subsequent behavioral problems (Im 2014 ; Dearing et al 2006 ).…”

Dietary habits, physical activity, and sedentary behaviour of children of employed mothers: A systematic review

“… Self-reported children’s three-days food intake record – – Negative association was found between maternal working hours and child’s energy, protein and fat intake; breakfast eating Low risk of bias Aniza I et al (2009) (26) Malaysia UMIC Cross sectional study 14 and 16 years (n = 519) Data collected from secondary school students Bivariate analysis and logistic regression Self-reported employment status – Self-reported PA using International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). – Maternal employment had positive association with physical activity Low risk of bias Martin et al, 2018 (27) USA HIC Longitudinal study 12–18 years (n = 10,518) FE and cross-sectional model. Hours a week does s/ he work for pay – Self-reported number of times they engaged in various leisure activities during the past week Self-reported weekly hours of watching television, videos and playing video or computer games.…”