According to a survey conducted by Assocham, one in five kids in urban cities are overweight by the time he completes primary school and suffer from various lifestyle-related problems in later years.
Nearly 56 per cent of working mothers have unhealthy children followed by those who work part-time (28 per cent) and home makers (16 per cent), the survey revealed.
The reason – full-time working mothers are less likely to eat vegetables and fruits.
Another reason is the inclination of kids for junk food when they are not supervised by parents. The survey also points out that children aged five to seven, whose mothers have a full-time job have more chances of being overweight at 16 as mothers have less time for cooking and they buy ready-made food, often junk food.
City doctors relating it to the survey, too feel that working parents are able to give less time to their children so eating habits are affected. Dr G.S Patel, a pediatrician said,
“When mothers are working there is nobody to look after children. Sometimes they are left unsupervised so they indulge in bad eating habits. It is a documented fact that those children who have been brought up with formula based milk get obese. The study is relevant as working parents get less time to attend to their child.”
As per the survey, when parents are out, children remain indoors watching TV or playing computer games while consuming junk food rather than playing outside wasting calories.
“To meet family expenses and with rising trend of mothers being working, both parents remain in office for the whole day whereas children come home from school at noon. So, they remain unsupervised and watch TV and eat everything other than home-cooked food. Such parents find it difficult to make food at home and mostly plan to eat outside. This adversely affects the health of their child,” said Dr Ujwal Sardesai, a psychiatrist.
Sapna Kaushik, an employee in a private organization says, “Going for work is not a choice, it is more of a priority to meet rising family expenses. In such a case, kids are mostly left unsupervised. On our part we take utmost care that kids do not develop any bad habit.”
Schools also have the same opinion that the eating habits of children need urgent attention as cases of obesity and cardio-vascular diseases at an early age are becoming common. Cynthia James, principal, Indore Public School says, “Parents need to take care of their children and change their eating habits.”