Author Theorizes on Link Between Child Obesity and Loneliness
by Mary Rettig
September 26, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A conservative author has a new theory on why more children are overweight today than in previous generations. Jennifer Roback Morse, author of Smart Sex: Finding Lifelong Love In a Hookup World, admits her theory is only an amateur one, but says there is sufficient evidence to give it some credibility. Morse says children today live in more loneliness than every before -- and that helps expand their waistlines.
"[K]ids are not getting as much parental input and supervision and just plain attention as they should be getting," says the author. "And then also, kids don't have as many other kids to play with as they have in previous generations."
Morse says these factors can be attributed, at least in part, to maternal employment outside the home -- a movement based on feminist ideology. "Women have absorbed the message that motherhood is for ninnies, and that any intelligent woman should be in workforce," she shares, "and therefore their kids are spending more time in non-maternal care."
The author maintinas that no one cares about a child the way the child's mother cares about the child. "So a babysitter or a daycare provider is not going to be supervising what kids put in their mouth in the same way that mom and dad would be," she notes.
Morse also says women who work outside the home often put off having children until later in life, meaning less children in families and less children in neighborhoods to be played with. She believe that that, in turn, will cause children to stay inside more and involve themselves in sedentary activities such as watching television or playing video games.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
