The length of a mother's employment is associated with an increase in her child's body mass index, according to a study in the journal Child Development.
It's not the first study to suggest that moms' working hours and kids' weight might be related, but it's likely to peeve some mothers.
"It's not causal, it's an association," said lead author Taryn Morrissey about the trends.
"Nobody found a single smoking gun as a cause of childhood obesity. We found quite a small, but (statistically) significant increase in the body mass index of children. This increase is associated with maternal employment."
Morrissey and her co-authors observed the increase in children's BMI -- which, at third grade, was approximately a 1-pound gain for every six months the child's mother worked. The weight gain was cumulative and the link became stronger as the children matured into fifth- and sixth-grade in the analysis of 900 children....
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