Relationships among maternal employment and weight-related cognitions, behaviors, and home environments of mothers and their school-age children
Creators: name: Santiago, Elena
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2021

description: The prevalence of childhood obesity is an ongoing global concern. Parents, especially mothers, play a vital role in childhood obesity prevention in that they serve as models for their children and are household gatekeepers, hence have a major influence in shaping children’s weight-related behaviors, such as eating and exercise, and the environment where they perform them. Many factors affect maternal weight-related cognitions, which subsequently affect home environments and family weight-related behaviors. One factor that merits increased study is the relationship of paid employment to maternal weight-related cognitions, behaviors, and home environments. Paid employment is known to affect dynamics and patterns of a family’s lifestyle, yet the role it may play with regard to weight-related factors is understudied. Thus, the purpose of this study was to describe weight-related cognitions, behaviors, and home environments of mothers of school-age children (6 to 11-years old) and explore the associations between maternal employment and health, weight-related cognitions, behaviors, and home environments. Mothers (N=531) with school-age children participated in the online Home Obesogenicity Measure of EnvironmentS—Families with School-age Kids (HOMES-FSAK) survey, which was comprised of an array of scales assessing maternal health and weight-related cognitions, behaviors, and the home environment. Development of the HOMES-FSAK survey followed a carefully planned process to identify and/or create valid and reliable instruments that can be used with confidence by other researchers. Overall, mothers had positive weight-related cognitions and received moderate family support for healthy weight-related behaviors. Despite their generally positive weight-related cognitions, many weight-related behaviors were not optimal (such as physical activity and sleep). These findings suggest a disconnect between mothers’ positive cognitions and weight-related home environments and their expression as recommended behaviors. To explore whether hours of employment played a role in weight-related cognitions, behaviors, and home environments, full-time, part-time, and non-working mothers were compared. Few differences in weight-related factors occurred suggesting that the total hours of paid employment only played a minor role in weight-related cognitions, behaviors, and home environments. However, differences in maternal time allocation, household organization, and family conflict, along with non-significant trends toward less healthy weight-related behaviors exhibited by full-time working mothers suggested that factors other than just total weekly employment hours should be considered, such as impact of paid employment (e.g., job involvement, motivation to work). Thus, employed mothers were clustered by work impact (i.e., the degree to which they felt their work was interesting and secure, were involved in their work, placed importance on work relative to other things in life, felt strains from work on their family and parenting, and felt gains from their work on their family and parenting). Mothers clustered into three groups: Uninvolved, Unstrained, Motivated Gainers; Indifferent Workers; Unstrained, Highly Motivated, Involved, Gainers. There are two “Work Gainer” clusters who differ primarily in the strength of the gains they feel and in work motivation and involvement. These Work Gainer clusters tended to be similar in their health and weight-related cognitions, home environments, and behaviors. The Indifferent Worker cluster differed from Work Gainer clusters in food insecurity risk, health, feeding practices, family meal frequency, availability and accessibility to healthy foods and physical activity space and supports in the home, along with less healthy weight-related cognitions and behaviors. These differences suggest financial management, time management, health, and family support may affect work impact as well as weight-related factors. The cross-sectional nature of this study makes it impossible to determine whether work impact affected mothers’ weight-related factors or the vice versa or whether the associations were synergistic and reciprocal. Future research should aim to consider family and household dynamics and their effects on maternal employment to identify strategies to help families reduce maternal work-family conflicts. In addition, future studies should seek to clarify factors that affect maternal work impact and understand how maternal work impact affects the ability of families to engage in healthy weight-related behaviors.