There are always new reasons I am figuring out how women leaving their homes and getting careers has harmed our society. Sheila from To Love, Honor, And Vacuum wrote a piece years ago called My Theory Why Kids Are Overweight. Her conclusion is due to women leaving their homes, even though she doesn't state it that way or find the solution in mothers going back home.
When mothers left their homes for careers, fast food became the norm. Mothers were no longer around to shop for nutritious food and then prepare it. Mothers were no longer around to be at parks or in the neighborhoods to watch the children play outside. Families began relying on fast food, processed and packaged food, and junk food. Children began eating poorly and exercising less. They came home to empty homes and entertained themselves by eating junk food and watching junk television. Families stopped having family dinners together. Thus, children became overweight.
When my children were very young, I drove a half hour to a healthy food store to buy nutritious food for my family. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen preparing healthy food for them. Every afternoon, I would go into the cul-de-sac and watch them play outside with all the neighborhood children when they were young. If they weren't in the cul-de-sac, they were in the backyard playing. I wouldn't allow them to come home, eat junk food, and watch television when they were older. I was there, guarding and watching over my family and home.
Was I perfect? No, and I hope I never come across that way but I was home taking care of my family where I believe mothers should be. Running a home and taking care of a family takes a lot of time and energy. It is absolutely a full-time job. We should have never left this very important job for others to do, others who don't care about our family's health. We gave away our family's health to big corporations who use the lowest quality food, including chemicals not designed for human consumption and were only in it for the money.
Mothers, come home to your family. Begin watching over and guarding your home. Take time to fix nutritious food, watch your children play outside, and read to them. Tell them all the wonderful Bible stories of old and about the Rock of the Ages. You were created to be at home with your children. They need you.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She looks well to the ways of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Proverbs 31:26,27
Was I perfect? No, and I hope I never come across that way but I was home taking care of my family where I believe mothers should be. Running a home and taking care of a family takes a lot of time and energy. It is absolutely a full-time job. We should have never left this very important job for others to do, others who don't care about our family's health. We gave away our family's health to big corporations who use the lowest quality food, including chemicals not designed for human consumption and were only in it for the money.
Mothers, come home to your family. Begin watching over and guarding your home. Take time to fix nutritious food, watch your children play outside, and read to them. Tell them all the wonderful Bible stories of old and about the Rock of the Ages. You were created to be at home with your children. They need you.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She looks well to the ways of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Proverbs 31:26,27
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Denise · 564 weeks ago
Rebecca · 564 weeks ago
Sadie Grace · 564 weeks ago
This is an interesting topic to me as I myself have taken quite a journey. I don't want to place blame, because I think that ultimately every person is responsible for themselves, their choices and actions. My mom didn't teach me to cook. Everyone said she was such an awesome cook, but really, most of what she did was doctor up a prepackaged item. Well, she never passed this knowledge on to me, which may have been just as well. I entered marriage greatly unprepared for feeding my family. I knew how to bake some from scratch, but we couldn't live on muffins alone! LOL
Being greatly unprepared for marriage, I tried to prepare food the same way as my mom did. I use prepackaged food and sometimes doctored it up. I read the articles in Self and Health magazines. I read the claims on the packages. These foods were healthy! But this always nagged at my conscience. I knew this wasn't the best way, despite studies and claims. I knew this was a recent to the scene of human history way of eating. But I didn't know any better!! And really, even though I was a homemaker, why would I waste all that time in the kitchen when I could buy something made in a factory.
Then one day, I woke up and realized - it doesn't matter that I didn't know any better. It doesn't matter that I followed what all the latest "studies" say. *I* was responsible to learn how to feed my family. I began studying immensely, and began looking at sources OUTSIDE the main stream media. If a study was funded by Kraft, I dismissed it. I realized how poorly I'd been feeding my family all along. The boast on a package is irrelevant! After all, their objective is to sell stuff, not for me to be healthy.
The transition went from buying the cleanest ingredient lists possible to preparing all our food from scratch (really, everything except ketchup LOL). We all began feeling better and we ate food that we thought was immensely more tasty!
I don't mean to excuse anyone, because I think we are all responsible for our own choices, but I think we need to wake up and realize things. 1) How brainwashed we are about food and nutrition 2) How ignorant we are as a society about food. So many of these things we were never taught! (And I greatly attribute this to the feminist movement - some of the most prominent feminists boast how great factory food is because it keeps them out of the kitchen). Lack of knowledge is not an excuse. We can all learn this stuff on our own.
The first steps are turning off the tv and any main stream media sources about food. The mainstream media relationship with food is so unhealthy and skewed by dollars and sales. Turn that all off and think. 150 years ago, would our ancestors have eaten yogurt with red-40, aspartame and so on? Can I eat yogurt now without those things? Yup - plain, full-fat yogurt (all fat is not bad) with a bit of honey, vanilla and the smallest pinch of salt is super delicious! If you keep it simple, you don't even have to like to cook to still put fresh, nutritious food on the table. Not every meal has to be gourmet. It is very possible to cook real food affordably from scratch without spending all day in the kitchen. It's about choosing to and educating ourselves on how to, tossing aside the myths of the factor food companies. Turn off the tv then teach these things to our children (because for a couple generations now, food preparation has not been taught by the general population).
Thanks for bringing this to light Lori - I think so many people simply are ignorant to food that is not from a box or paper wrapper. I know I was! And yes, we are responsible for what our kids eat. Even if a mom works outside the home, I don't believe it is an excuse to feed crappy food. Plenty of real food meals are easy to cook (roasted chicken breasts and baked potatoes for example). We need to completely reevaluate our relationship with food, regardless of working outside the home or not.
Cynthia · 564 weeks ago
One of the things that we are learning is that the obesity epidemic isn't really about lack of willpower, or individual failures. It's about health information that turned out to be horribly wrong, government policies that favor corn growers over health, and a food industry looking to produce cheap, addictive food that doesn't really care about the health consequences.
Let's look at how this might play out for a typical mom. She cares about her family and their health. She's heard that saturated fat is bad, so she buys margarine instead of butter. She also looks for products that are advertised as being low-fat or fat-free - but doesn't realize how much more sugar some of these products contain. She makes sure to serve salad with meals - but doesn't realize how much sugar is in the salad dressing. She's happy to buy whole-grain breakfast cereal and even gets the kids to eat granola - without realizing that each serving comes with 13 grams of sugar. She cooks up some pasta and adds some sauce during lunch - without realizing that the pasta sauce has 12 grams of sugar per serving. She cooks BBQ chicken at dinner - without realizing that the BBQ sauce has 14 grams of sugar per serving. She feels good that her kids aren't allowed soft drinks and that they drink V8 fruit and veggies juice - but doesn't realize that it still has 26 grams of sugar per serving. She has some organic, gluten-free brownies for dessert - without realizing that they contain just as much, or more, sugar as regular brownies.
There are solutions, but we need to educate parents so that they know that it's possible to make fast, healthy meals that are not expensive. We also need to do something about "food deserts" - areas where no fresh, healthy food is available.
We also have this idea that cooking from scratch needs to be time-consuming and that it's hard to do. Even for stay-at-home mothers of young children, it's hard to find time to spend hours in the kitchen.
We need to let parents know about REAL convenience foods - things like eggs, frozen fruits and veggies, canned diced tomatoes, beans and chick peas, extra-firm tofu, chicken pieces and slow cookers. Eggs take only a few minutes to make, have no sugar and are packed with protein. Frozen fruit, plain Greek yogurt, protein powder and a bit of juice, water or milk makes an awesome breakfast smoothie. Canned diced tomatoes and beans makes an excellent base for a chili, a curry or a soup. It takes only 5 min in the morning to pop stewing beef, canned diced tomatoes, frozen veggies, barley and some garlic and spices into a slow cooker, and you can come home to a wonderful, hearty and healthy meal. You can also make your own mixes for things like pancakes and muffins, with less sugar and with whole grains and oats. I put the dry ingredients into plastic containers, label each one and put the rest of the baking instructions on it. It's so much easier in the busy mornings to think about making these things if you don't have to worry about flour all over the kitchen and know that you can simply reach for your plastic container, add your oil and eggs and milk, and have everything mixed up in 2 min.
RetiredNavyWife · 564 weeks ago
Kids were always active. Sports, playing outside, lawn mowing, bike riding, all that good stuff. People get fat b/c they eat crap and sit on their duffs. Its very easy to turn the TV OFF and shoo the kids outside. Its easy to take the kids, sign them up for swimming lessons, dance class, gymnastics, baseball, football, music lessons and make the effort to take them to those lessons. I used to leave my house about 7am. I'd roll in the door about 4:30 and go right back out to deliver one kid to gymnastics, another to baseball and the third to dance class. I'd arrange carpools if I had to. It's not that hard to make family a priority even if you're working full time.
Love being his wife · 564 weeks ago
I have just this week gotten my pantry to the place where it is set up to only cook/ bake from scratch and I feel I am once again up to the challenge. In fact I can't wait to start. When we were renovating our little home I used a lot of packet food; I didn't like doing it.
But laying flooring, painting walls, make curtains, tiling my kitchen, laundry and bathroom both floors and walls, Pulling down walls putting new ones up. Putting windows and doors in, Shelving up cupboards in, putting in and building wardrobes and a whole host of other things just wore me out. I laid all the tiles, slate and wood floors in our home! While my precious Ant did all the cutting and measuring by the end of the day we where so tired that there was no way I could of cooked from scratch. But I definitely did do my very best to cook good food! I think what Lori has written is what we can aim for however I doubt many will be able to pull it off all the time as life many a time throws us curve balls.
Diane · 564 weeks ago
Thankyou Thankyou!
Cynthia · 564 weeks ago
I found a website that talks about the sort of recipes that I grew up with - recipes from church cookbooks that usually called for cream of something soup or some other magic ingredient.
http://cakercooking.blogspot.ca/p/caker-faqs.html
Love being his wife. · 564 weeks ago
Thank you for your help!!!
Sue B. · 564 weeks ago
That is how it went if everything ran smoothly. If I had to stay late at work, or if the weather was bad, or if I needed to run an errand, or if I needed to attend one of the kid’s activities, or if someone got sick, or if someone had an appointment, or if my car wouldn’t start or had a flat tire – then there was even less time to make/eat dinner unless we wanted to eat at 9 o’clock.
As the kids got older and more independent it got easier to make home cooked dinners and the drive-thru became the exception, not the rule. But for a working mom with kids of many ages, it was very hard to put a home-cooked dinner on the table every day of the week.
Ken · 564 weeks ago
"When it comes to cooking, grocery shopping and playing with children, American moms with full-time jobs spend roughly three-and-half fewer hours per day on these and other chores related to their children's diet and exercise compared to stay-at-home and unemployed mothers, reports a new paper by a Cornell economist."
"However, cautioned lead author John Cawley, professor of policy analysis and management and of economics in the College of Human Ecology, "it's inaccurate to pin rising childhood obesity rates on women, given that husbands pick up so little of the slack."
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2012/08/worki...
It is in so many areas that a stay at home Mom can help keep their kids healthy where a working mom struggles to do the same. There is so little control over what a child eats when Moms work, not only snacking in the home but teenagers buying what they want and having much more opportunity to "not be hungry" even when the working Mom comes home and cooks a good dinner. Most working Moms are "picking up food" 2-3 times a week or more.
Also the area of exercise gets compromised when both parents work. With no one home to monitor activities kids tend to veg by the TV and computer instead of being pushed outside to play. Groups of kids hanging out usually have snacks that are no good for them. There is zero doubt that a stay at home Mom will have the opportunity to raise much healthier children. There is no guarantee she will, but with her extra 8-9 hours a day she certainly has a lot more time to do right by her family.
Obesity is exploding in the US and some of the blame should be accepted by couples who choose to have the Mom work, and then do not provide proper nutrition, exercise and monitoring of both to their children. Someone is to blame. Who is it if it is not the parents? This is just one important part of parenting that is insidious as the disease progresses so gradually one pizza and Big Mac after another.
Just 100 extra calories a day of saturated or hydrogenated fat leads to 24 pounds of extra weight in two years and the beginning of heart disease and diabetes. To put that in perspective that is only 15 extra potato chips a day. And once the weight is on the body will always try to balloon back up to its top weight the rest of ones life. Work or don't work, watch what your children eat, and ask them about what they are eating outside the home if they are not hungry at the dinner table. This is part of being a good parent as children will not have the self-discipline necessary to handle food properly unless they are taught it. Another reason for Stay at Home Moms who are training their children in life and godliness.
Cynthia · 564 weeks ago
The episodes were really great for showing how exactly to make a meal plan, cook simple but good meals, deal with "fright nights" where there was almost no time to cook anything, and get the whole family involved. Not surprisingly, she's a mom of 7.
afewthingstoday 18p · 564 weeks ago
Jo · 564 weeks ago
I have been watching a fascinating documentary called “The men who made us fat” and it is an eye-opener. It all started with the increase yields in corn which led to an oversupply of corn which the US Department of Agriculture decided that it should be turned into corn-syrup. Corn-syrup is cheaper than sugar and soda companies decided it was the best thing to add to fizzy drinks – in large quantities. Processed foods from soda to bread all became sweeter as corn-syrup was added to everything. Down the track when the US population began to get fatter which lead some bright spark to decide that we should all eat “low fat” which lead to the highly successful low fat marketing of food – yes, it was low fat, however it was very HIGH sugar and that is why we are getting fatter. The powerful US sugar lobby has done everything in their power to stop the light being shone on them as the culprits of increase obesity, going as far as threatening the World Health Organisation. They do not want things to change and in the process the population is getting fat.
Yes, some mothers are very quick to turn to fast foods/ready-made (as a time saver), but there are many working mothers that home cook, and I am one of them. Sociologically, the evidences shows that those who are more educated and living in higher income families tend to eat better (home cooked from scratch) and lower income/poorly educated families are struggling with healthy foods.
This is a very complex issue and has more to do with advertising and the cleverness of food manufacturers who have conned the population .
Lori Alexander 122p · 564 weeks ago
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2011/02/14/...
Lori Alexander 122p · 564 weeks ago
Less time for mothers to spend with children due to their work schedules: There are definite downsides to women working. For example, mothers working full-time means they have busier schedules and less time to spend with children. “One third of all school age children in the United States are, for some part of the week, latch key kids; that is, they go home to an empty house or apartment” (Alston, 2007). As The Economist article warns, “Even well-off parents worry that they spend too little time with their children, thanks to crowded schedules and the ever-buzzing Blackberry.”
Increased stress levels and changing roles: Harper and Leicht (Exploring Social Change: America and the World, 2007, p. 91) state, “The most pressing problem of dual-income families is not money, but the problem of managing ‘ragged’ family schedules and adjusting husband/wife roles.” Women are currently juggling full-time careers, managing household chores and child rearing duties, as well as taking care of aging parents, thus greatly increasing their level of daily stress compared to women of previous generations. Family relationships have also been shifting in dual-income families from patriarchal authority and “from fixed ‘role scripts’ toward more flexible ‘role negotiation’” and equalitarian relationships (p. 93).
Therefore, all the positives the feminists argue for women working out of the home are completely negated by the negatives. The family has been hit the hardest, the mainstay of any society.
Kim · 564 weeks ago
linda · 564 weeks ago