TY - JOUR
T1 - Does mothers’ employment affect adolescents’ weight and activity levels? Improving our empirical estimates
AU - Martin, Molly A.
AU - Lippert, Adam M.
AU - Chandler, Kelly D.
AU - Lemmon, Megan
N1 - Funding Information:
This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development , with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website ( http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth ). No direct support was received from grant P01HD31921 for this analysis. Research reported in this manuscript was supported by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health and Society Scholars program, a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development ( P01HD062498 , PI: Landale), and the Penn State Population Research Institute who receives core support from the National Institutes of Health ( R24-HD041025 ; PI: Van Hook). Opinions expressed reflect those of the authors, not those of the granting agencies.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Authors
PY - 2018/4
Y1 - 2018/4
N2 - Women's lives are marked by complex work and family routines — routines that have implications for their children's health. Prior research suggests a link between mothers’ work hours and their children's weight, but few studies investigate the child health implications of increasingly common work arrangements, such as telecommuting and flexible work schedules. We examine whether changes in mothers’ work arrangements are associated with changes in adolescents’ weight, physical activity, and sedentary behavior using longitudinal data and fixed effects models to better account for mothers’ social selection in to different work arrangements and children's underlying preferences. With data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 10,518), we find that changes in mothers’ work arrangements are not significantly associated with adolescents’ weight gain or physical activity but are significantly associated with adolescents’ sedentary behavior. Adolescents’ sedentary behavior declines when mothers become more available after school and increases when mothers work more hours or become unemployed. In sum, after accounting for unobserved, stable traits, including mothers’ selection into jobs with more or less flexibility, mothers’ work arrangements are most strongly associated with adolescents’ sedentary behavior.
AB - Women's lives are marked by complex work and family routines — routines that have implications for their children's health. Prior research suggests a link between mothers’ work hours and their children's weight, but few studies investigate the child health implications of increasingly common work arrangements, such as telecommuting and flexible work schedules. We examine whether changes in mothers’ work arrangements are associated with changes in adolescents’ weight, physical activity, and sedentary behavior using longitudinal data and fixed effects models to better account for mothers’ social selection in to different work arrangements and children's underlying preferences. With data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 10,518), we find that changes in mothers’ work arrangements are not significantly associated with adolescents’ weight gain or physical activity but are significantly associated with adolescents’ sedentary behavior. Adolescents’ sedentary behavior declines when mothers become more available after school and increases when mothers work more hours or become unemployed. In sum, after accounting for unobserved, stable traits, including mothers’ selection into jobs with more or less flexibility, mothers’ work arrangements are most strongly associated with adolescents’ sedentary behavior.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ssmph.2018.03.003
DO - 10.1016/j.ssmph.2018.03.003
M3 - Article
C2 - 29854913
AN - SCOPUS:85056460018
VL - 4
SP - 291
EP - 300
JO - SSM - Population Health
JF - SSM - Population Health
SN - 2352-8273
ER -