"Household Instability" And Obesity
Here’s a study from the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved (which may I say I am happy exists) that talks about the link between household instability and obesity—specifically, obesity in mothers.
Thirty-eight percent of mothers in low-instability households were obese, while nearly 48 percent in high-instability households were obese.
The researchers rated household instability by taking into account parental stress (for instance, whether mothers felt alone or trapped by their responsibilities), financial instability and ability to keep food on the table.
We all know we’re facing a frightening economy right now, and I think there are a lot of people out there feeling financially unstable, and worrying about feeding their kids. We’ve talked about the link between poverty and obesity before—remember the revelation that poor, obese children actually weren’t eating enough?
Scott Marcus is a “Thinspirational” (gag) speaker, but does ultimately evince compassion for the people talked about in the study. He imagines this scenario:
“Hi Honey, I was laid off from work. Won’t that be grand? Now we have even more time to spend together. So I was thinking we take a day and do something fun. What would you like to do?”
“Well, let’s see. How ’bout if we try to pay our bills with too little money, stretch our food budget beyond the breaking point, almost declare bankruptcy due to medical bills, fight to stay in the house, and try and keep all the children quiet and content? That would be relaxing, wouldn’t it?”
“Can’t wait! Life’s just one big vacation, isn’t it?”
I guess what I’m getting at here is that we have no idea what kind of pressures people are under, and compassion instead of judgment and finger-pointing should rule the day. What are your thoughts on fat and the economy, or the fact that it is mothers (and not fathers or children) who are being discussed here?
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Cold Hard Cash, Feminism, Food, Health, Kids, Work
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Well, mothers are to blame for everything aren’t they? I know I blame my mother for everything wrong in my life.
Personally, I like the first line “Although mothers’ weight increases along with household instability, their young children’s weight does not”. I think there’s a huge assumption that fat mothers create fat children and that statement knocks it out of the park right off the bat. Of course the tune changes by the last paragraph.
It makes perfect sense that a poor economy would encourage poor eating. Every where we look food is a comfort. But I think it’s limiting to put even more on mother’s shoulders.
I’ve long spoken out on issues of poverty and its relationship to health, nutrition and obesity rates. I haven’t looked at the study beyond what is posted here, but I think they concentrated on mothers simply because so many poor families are single-parent families. These single parents tend to overwhelmingly led by moms and not dads. Moms have also historically been considered the guardian of family food consumption, a perception that continues even today. You never see men preparing food to serve to their families in commercials and advertisements. Unless, of course, it’s something easy like Easy Mac or a microwave dinner intended for the hearty man.
I wonder, when we have already seen studies showing that fat people are less likely to be hired than the thin, would we also be more likely to be fired? In a time of economic instability, could fat prejudice be causing “family instability”?
I work on a daily basis with families in a transitional homeless program. Believe me, there are a lot more factors involved than just so-called “lazy parents that exist on a daily consumption of fast food because it’s cheaper to feed their kids that. ” Poor families who rely on food stamps for groceries can only use them for certain items, most of which is the processed stuff that so many are trying to avoid.
There’s also the issue of low-income neighborhoods, which are not the safest places to be active in. Some are lucky if they have a playground or park.
If government and watchdog groups really want to help, perhaps they should look into making good food and activity accessible for these families, instead of adding to the stigmas they’re already facing.
38% and 48% just sounds like a lot of women are considered obese. Doesn’t have anything to do with the kids.
Also, that’s a trick we learned in a marketing class I took, spell out “thirty eight” percent to downplay that number but “48” stands out in the middle of a sentence. I wonder why they would do that..
Just jumping in as a copy editor, but many (if not most, if not all) style guides have you spell out the number if it begins a sentence.
I think this is one of those correlation-not-causation questions. The greatest cause of “household instability” is money. The less you have the more instable you tend to be. If poor people tend to be fat (again with another chicken/egg question) then it follows that fat is correlated with instability. IMHO it’s more likely that fat women have fewer opportunities for education and better jobs, and also get crappier healthcare, making their lives less stable.
Oh good grief, I am on cold medication. instable? unstable? Now nothing looks right and they are both rhyming with Huxtable in my head.
Correlation does not necessarily imply causation!
Well, it says one of the things they rated to determine instability was parental stress, and being fat can cause a lot of extra stress due to being treated like shit by friends/colleagues/strangers/the media/society, so that could be a factor.
An interesting dynamic here is how blame often lands on the disadvantaged. Going back at least to the Victorian times (see George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalian) there has been a tendency to divide the poor into deserving and undeserving. Often ‘undeserving’ relates to consumption issues: alcohol or drugs, food (fat) and even money itself. I am interested in the similarities between our discussions here about how poorer obese people, particularly mothers, are blamed and stigmatised with some things I’ve read about how people who over-borrowed in the boom years are now being blamed and stigmatised and policies to help them to avoid losing their houses are criticised on the ground that it rewards them for their ‘bad’ behaviour. Matthew Ygeslias has thorough de-bunked this argument here: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/, scroll down to the item ‘On So-Called “Irresponsible” Borrowers’. I’d like to know what people think about the parallels – am I imagining it?
I don’t know about this. This hobgoblin called “stress” is all about perception, usually self-perception. Fat or thin, rich or poor, every person has her own ideas about whether her life is stressful or not. Anxiety is such a personal thing and knows no socioeconomic boundaries. So many other factors come into play, and a major one is brain chemistry.
I think Bree nailed it.
And blaming the ills of society on mothers is nothing new. (I wish we could stop, already!) In the 40’s, Autism was blamed on “poor mothering.” Ann Coulter blames all of our current woes on single mothers. (Of course, Ann Coulter is an idiot, so that’s not terribly surprising.)
Thanks for the reference to my column. I’m pleased with the responses I’ve received. However, the main point of my column was to get people to realize that — for most of us — we have the resources to make intelligent decisions and not just function from an unthinking habit. Stress is definitely a contributor, but we can overcome our habits with a little bit of forethought.