Working mothers ‘struggling with pressure to provide healthy meals’
A study seeking to understand the challenges of food provision in families has found working mothers feel stressed and are struggling with the added pressure of preparing healthy meals.
About 62 per cent of Australians mothers are in the workforce and the majority shoulder the bulk of household and parenting duties as well.
Angela Tomarelli with son, Nolan.
Researchers spoke to 22 working mothers with children under the age of 13 and found they were “very nutritionally aware”, said lead-author Associate Professor Kaye Mehta from Flinders University, but didn’t turn to nutritional guidelines for help.
“In fact, they saw them [guidelines] as an additional burden,” Mehta said, adding that the guidelines focus on what should be eaten but do not help with how to eat healthily.
“[The women] spoke about juggling that time after school; evening sport, a tired child and the need to get a meal in them and the dilemmas for them around how do they manage a child’s tiredness?
“Fast food and convenience foods come in when they’re stretched during those episodes … but I was struck with how guilty they felt.”
More than a quarter of Australian children are overweight or obese and most are eating too many processed foods, including biscuits, cakes and muffins, while 99 per cent are not eating enough vegetables. Associate Professor Mehta said there is “certainly something going wrong” with children’s nutrition and physical activity, but the burden shouldn’t be the mother's to bear.
“Mothers need to be celebrated and affirmed for their work in family care,” she said. “I think it’s not so much about mothers changing their views as society not having those implicit expectations of mothers… that it’s women’s work.”
Five years ago, Angela Tomarelli, 37, was studying full-time and working part-time while looking after her four-year-old son, Nolan.
“I’d often be home before my husband was home from work so, on top of that, I was also doing most of the cooking,” said the Adelaide-based researcher.
I think it’s not so much about mothers changing their views as society not having those implicit expectations of mothers.
“The thinking about nutrition is guilt. When you think about, ‘Well, what have we actually eaten this week?’ and I came up with a pasta with a pre-packaged sauce with no vegetables in it and you go, ‘Oh this is not really the best nutrition for my family’.”
While sometimes she “cobbled” together a meal plan on a Sunday and the week “flowed” better, she admits she finds meal preparation stressful. She’s not alone.
“Lack of time is consistently the most common complaint that I hear from women who are struggling with their diet,” said accredited practising dietitian, Melanie McGrice. “I work with women to help them be more realistic. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a one-week rotating meal plan whereby the family eats fish every Friday and a roast every Sunday.”
Kaye Mehta believes there also needs to be healthier convenience foods, provision of healthy food at daycare and school, flexible work time for mothers and fathers as well as more equal division of domestic labour.
“In Scandinavian countries, there’s more sharing of family work between men and women and it’s those social structures and reforms that change the way people think,” she said. “Men think it’s perfectly natural for them to be picking up 50 per cent of the work rather than waiting to be asked to do jobs. To be seen as ‘helping’ is different from having the primary responsibility.”
Tomarelli and her husband now share the housework and food preparation, and use a meal delivery service to provide healthy options when they are time-poor.
“There’s always a reluctance to have a more honest conversation with your partner that you’re not coping – just being willing to say ‘the division of labour isn’t really working for me and we need to come up with a new solution’,” she said, adding: “You can’t beat yourself up too much, you’re just doing the best you can.”
Source: Read Full Article
