Study Concludes that Everything Wrong in the World is the Fault of Women

[goldenhera]

Study Concludes That Working Moms Make Kids Fat

The more mothers work, the fatter their kids get. The solution is obviously to live in a world where, magically, economic necessity doesn't dictate that two parents earn incomes in order to adequately support children. Be richer, moms!

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and

Comments

[randomneses]

Yeah, as the daughter of a working mom, I really have zero fucking words for this drivel. BMI is bullshit anyway.

[goldenhera]

I too am the daughter of a working mom. It's amazing we are still alive, not having keeled over from the years of fat our moms have forced onto us due to working. Damn our selfish mothers! Trying to provide for us and what not.

Show me the receipts

[roseofjuly]

Not only is BMI bullshit as randomneses pointed out (it doesn't account for the differences between muscle mass and fat mass), but I wanna see the effect size. Statistically speaking, if you have a large enough sample (and 900 is certainly large enough) you can detect very small changes and differences. Usually in health and psychological research just having statistical significance (which means a less than 5% chance that you found your results by random chances due to biases and error) is enough to get you published, but articles often don't share the effect size. The difference could be as small as two points on the BMI scale.

And ah, here is the effect size in the original article.

"For a third grader of average height, the increase in BMI was equivalent to an extra one and a half to two pounds over what that child would normally gain in a year," Morrissey said.My wonder is if they did a multi-level model, which would be a technique in which they could isolate between-person differences (the differences between kids with

Okay so I hunted down the article

[roseofjuly]

I looked up the study because I was curious. It is, in fact, a prospective study; it's the National Institute for Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)'s Study of Early Child Care and and Youth Development (SECCYD). They enrolled over 1300 infants in 10 cities (both big and small) in the study at the age of 1 month and then followed them until 6th grade (which, guessing that happens around age 11-12, would take us until 2002 or 2003

Re: Okay so I hunted down the article

[mswyrr]

The epic knowledge you have dropped on us here is a beauteous thing. I wish I could take the money these asshats made doing their fail!search and award it to you for excellence in bullshit analysis.

Re: Okay so I hunted down the article

[roseofjuly]

This would be most excellent. I think I will go write that grant right now: "Further Studies in Bullshit Analysis: The Connection Between Fail and Facepalm."

[tacky_tramp]

The BusinessWeek article makes me want to vomit right from sentence one: "As if working mothers don't have enough to feel guilty about ..." What the fuck? Why should working mothers feel guilty? If it's because they don't spend 24 hours a day with their kids, shouldn't working fathers feel guilty, too? HAAAAAAAATE.

Also:

The researchers concluded that it may be changes in children's eating and sleeping patterns (factors that were not included in the data)

A STUDY ABOUT FATNESS DIDN'T INCLUDE EATING AND SLEEPING AS POSSIBLE FACTORS? WHAT THE EVERLOVING CHRIST.

[mswyrr]

Why should they look at such frivolous details as eating and sleeping when there's a perfectly convenient scapegoat nearby?

These people didn't go into research to THINK!

[sisterjune]

what the ever loving fuck. my mom works and she is like a hawk about what the kids eat. and i got my nutrition habits from her and i am so careful with my food.

[popehippo]

LET ME ILLUSTRATE ALL THE FUCKS I GIVE.

----> <----

(In that infinite space, it's there, I'm sure of it.)

[ididthatonce]