"Over the past 35 years, the percentage of U.S. mothers who hold down a job while raising kids has soared, from less than 50 percent to more than 70 percent. The childhood obesity rate -- which is now close to 17 percent -- has more than tripled during the same time frame.
These overlapping trends may not be a coincidence. The longer a mother is employed, the more likely her children are to be overweight or obese, a new study of grade-schoolers published in the journal Child Development suggests.
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Mothers who have jobs don't directly cause weight problems in their children, but busy families may accelerate weight gain by relying too much on fast food and frozen dinners rather than preparing fresh, healthy meals, the researchers say.
'It's not the mother's employment, but the environment,' says the lead author of the study..."
-From Health.com via The Huffington Post (full article details the limitations of the study)
