| Working Moms are healthier than the stay-at-home mothers |
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According to new research carried out in Britain, married mothers who also hold jobs, in spite of having to juggle career and home, enjoy better health than their underemployed or childless peers.
Data from a long-term study launched in the U.K. in 1946 shows that despite the stress working mothers face by holding down a job, dealing with childcare, housework and striving to keep the family happy, working mothers enjoy better health than full-time housewives. The working mothers, when compared to full-time housewives are the least likely to be obese by middle age and the most likely to report generally good health.
The study also discovered that single mothers experience the worse health than working mothers who have a partner and children.
Epidemiologist Anne McMunn- Team leader from University College London drew more than 1,400 female participants from a study of 5,362 Britons born during the first week of March 1946.
Followed throughout their lives, including face-to-face interviews and health examination with the help of a questionnaire at ages 26, 36, 46 and 53, the women provided data from both their own views of their health as well as objective measures such as body-mass index.
Every decade, the questionnaire collects data on each woman’s work history, whether she is/was married, has children, her height and weight. By assessing both subjective and objective information, the researchers hoped to discover whether working moms undertook such multitasking because of their inherent health or achieved good health because of their multiple roles.
Of the 555 working moms, only 23 % proved obese by age 53, compared to 38 % of the 151 stay-at-home mothers, who also averaged the highest body-mass index of all six categories of women, rounded out by single working mothers, the childless, multiply-married working moms and intermittently-employed married mothers. Furthermore, full-time homemakers reported the poorest health, followed by single mothers and the childless.
The healthiest women were the ones who had all three of the following:
• A Partner
• Children
• A job
Certainly, the data do not show why working mothers are healthiest but the women’s view of their own health at 26 did not correlate with whether they undertook both careers and families, seeming to discount a definitive role for good health in determining a woman’s choices. Working correlated with low body mass in all groups, including single moms and childless women.
"Our results suggest that good health is more likely to be the result, rather than the cause, of multiple role occupation,” the researchers write in a paper presenting the findings in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. “The next step is to better understand what it is about particular work and family roles that influences people’s health.”
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