Talk about fanning the flames of guilt.
“Working mothers have fatter children” screamed a headline in the Times (London) on July 23rd, reporting on a study published by the International Journal of Obesity. The Independent added fuel to the fire, gleefully trumpeting that “the nation’s highest paid working mothers bear much of the responsibility for the nation’s ticking obesity time bomb.”
The new research, carried out at the UCL Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, finds an association between maternal employment (particularly long hour, highly paid maternal employment) and obesity among British preschool children. The researchers are careful to point out a variety of risk factors ranging from inattentive dads to a shortage of sports programs, but these qualifications have not prevented an orgy of working mother bashing in the press. Rather than laying out the complexity of the challenge, the media simply dumps the blame on the backs of working moms.
Such guilt trips are clearly bad for women -- pumping up anxiety levels and distorting decision making. But they are also bad for employers, since they ramp up attrition rates and exacerbate the flight risk among talented women.
See full Article.
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