Mind how you go

Research on women and work often walks on thin ice. Is it really neutral, disinterested research, just telling us - ‘the facts’? The trouble is, research can always be used or misintepreted by those with a particular axe to grind.

That’s the first thing that came to my mind when I heard about research into working mums and children’s health on the Radio and TV news this morning. You can find out about the research in The Independent and on the BBC.

So, what are the findings?

” Children whose mothers are employed are more likely to be driven to school, watch TV, snack on fizzy drinks and eat too few portions of fruits and vegetables, a study found.

The research, on more than 12,000 British schoolchildren, was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Mothers who worked full-time had the unhealthiest children, followed by those who worked part-time. A total of 30 per cent (4,030) of the mothers had not worked since the birth of their child but the rest (8,546) were employed. “

Source: The Independent

Well, its certainly a big sample.

But my wife (Dr R Abbott, no less, who studies these things at Cambridge University) tells me we should not leap to conclusions.

The research has used a large data set and churned out the statistics. But it hasn’t considered the impact of family structure and it may be for instance that fathers and/or single parents take responsibility for sport.

Neither have I been able to discern any indication of how significant the health differences are. There are issues of operationalisation here: how many are ‘too few fruit and veg portions’. And just because you get driven to school and watch TV surely doesn’t mean that you are necessarily less healthy than other children does it? My own idle offspring seem to spend a ridiculous amount of time ‘talking’ to friends on MSN and watching junk TV. But both play football and do quite a bit of sport. How is the research defining ‘unhealthiest’?

And of course the danger is that a finding like this will be used for a political purpose - people can clearly use it to set up an argument that women should not work, because its bad for their children’s health. They should therefore give up their jobs and careers and get back to the house and look after the children.

I was pleased to hear Evan Davis, the presenter of the Today programme on Radio 4, ask the researcher if they had investigated whether fathers working habits had any detrimental effect on children’s health! Of course they hadn’t. Gosh, Evan almost deserves an honorary sociology degree, just for that comment.