Maternal nonstandard work schedules and adolescent overweight

Abstract

Objectives: We investigated whether nonstandard work schedules by mothers were associated with adolescent overweight.

Methods: We conducted multiple regression analyses using a sample of mother-child pairs (n=2353) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine the association between the number of years mothers worked at nonstandard schedules and adolescent overweight at age 13 or 14 years. Separate analyses were also conducted by family income and family type.

Results: Child's body mass index increased significantly if mothers worked either a few years or many years at nonstandard schedules. Risk of overweight was also significantly associated with 1 to 4 and 10 or more years of maternal nonstandard work schedules. In both cases, results were driven by those families with predicted incomes in the 2nd quartile ("near-poor"), with a few or many years of nonstandard work schedules also associated with increased risk of adolescent overweight in 2-parent families.

Conclusions: Results indicate the importance of the overlooked association between maternal nonstandard work schedules and adolescent overweight at age 13 or 14 years. Nonstandard work schedules among near-poor families and in 2-parent families may disrupt the work-family balance, affecting adolescent overweight.

FIGURE 1—

Association of number of years of maternal nonstandard work shifts with predicted values of BMI (a) and probability of child overweight (b): National Longitudinal Survey of Youth–Child Supplement, 1979–2004. Note. BMI = body mass index.