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Title: Maternal Employment, Adolescent’s Unhealthy Lifestyle and their Body Mass Index: Evidence from NLSY 97
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Lee, Haena |
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Maternal Employment, Adolescent’s Unhealthy Lifestyle and their Body Mass Index: Evidence from NLSY 97 Presented: New York NY, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2013 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: American Sociological Association Keyword(s): Activities; Body Mass Index (BMI); Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; Maternal Employment; Obesity; Physical Activity (see also Exercise) Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. In this paper, I examine the question of whether mother’s working status is associated with their adolescent’s body mass index, over and above the impact of adolescent’s unhealthy lifestyle (e.g., breakfast skipping, fruits/vegetables consumption, and spending more time on TV and less time on exercise). I hypothesize that (1) maternal employment may be positively associated with adolescent’s body mass index adjusting for individual socioeconomic status (SES) and that (2) adolescent’s eating habits and physical activities may mediate this association. (3) Partly because adolescent with working mothers may skip breakfast, consume less fruits and vegetables, spend more time on TV and exercise less, responsive to time constraints and less monitoring by working mothers. Using the Logistic Regression Model, data are derived from adolescent aged from 12-17 in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 97 (NLSY97) round 1 (year 1997). Findings indicate that there is no direct association between maternal employment and childhood obesity than their counterpart non-employed mothers. Rather, a strong impact of individual-level characteristics, such as parent’s net worth and mother’s body mass index (BMI), is founded to play a pivotal role in adolescent BMI. Further, these associations are more unavoidable and are actually mediated entirely by adolescent’s unhealthy eating habits and their sedentary activities. Therefore, prevention and intervention of adolescent’s obesogenic behaviors within the familial context, regardless of their maternal employment status, must be considered in order to prevent further significant increase in the prevalence of adolescent obesity. |
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Bibliography Citation
Lee, Haena. "Maternal Employment, Adolescent’s Unhealthy Lifestyle and their Body Mass Index: Evidence from NLSY 97." Presented: New York NY, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2013. |