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Working mums are healthier than stay-at-home mums

Here's some good news for working mothers. Juggling work, children and home life is positively good for you.

Finally, there is some news to ease the guilt weighing down working mothers the world over. An English study has found that women who juggle a family with paid employment are healthier than stay-at-home mums.

Working mothers are also less likely to gain weight than home makers, single women and childless women, the study found.

Published in the international Journal Of Epidemiology And Community Health, the study was conducted by researchers from University College of London (UCL), who examined data on 2604 women born in 1946.

Lead researcher of UCL's Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Dr. Anne McMunn, said the study found that women who occupied multiple roles over the long term reported relatively good health at the age of 54, and it appears this was a result of combining work and family life.

Although it was already known that women who combined work with motherhood and a good relationship had better health, Dr McMunn said that this study has proven that women are healthy because they are working and having children, rather than working and having children because they are healthy.

"This study is the first to demonstrate that there may be potential long-term health benefits of being able to participate in all areas of society," Dr McMunn says.

Dr. Dorothy Broom, senior fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University in Canberra, says she is not surprised by the study's results.

"It's been demonstrated again and again over many decades that working women are healthier," Dr Broom says. "But this study is really important because you can see it isn't just a case of healthier women working and the ones that are not so healthy staying at home."

Dr. Broom says part of this phenomenon could be due to the improved social and support networks developed by people in paid employment.

"Stay-at-home mothers tend to be more isolated," she says. "Another factor would be that if a woman stays at home full-time then the household won't have as good an income. "Something that's been documented again and again is that women's paid work makes a significant contribution to financial wellbeing, which it is known to contribute to other types of wellbeing, such as health."

Dr. Lou Wilson, a post-doctorate fellow at the University of Adelaide's Centre for Labour Research, agrees. "People who are poor, or socially disadvantaged, are unable to afford better healthcare, healthier food, access to sporting facilities, and so on."

Dr. Wilson says that in Australia, and any western capitalist society, having a job is considered a mark of success. So whether you work or not will affect your self-esteem. "Not having a job in our society attracts a certain stigma," he says. "If you have work you are seen as being a good citizen.

So working is good for your mental health, because it gives you a sense of worth." Sharon Pearson, chief executive officer of Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne-based life coach company. The Coaching Institute, says being busy improves one's self-esteem.

"If we are very busy and needed, the action of coming through for someone gives us a feeling of wellbeing and self-esteem, and because we are feeling good about ourselves, we are more likely to take care of ourselves," she says.Going out to work also gives us the perception that more people are looking at us and assessing us, which may make us try harder to be healthy, Pearson says.

"When you go to the office you are trying to impress other people with how you present yourself," she says. "This increases the likelihood of you wanting to appear fit and well."

Being in the workforce has the added advantage of shifting you out of your comfort zone. "If we stay at home and just deal with the same people all the time we develop a comfort zone, which means we have less awareness of opportunities to stretch ourselves," Pearson says. "But the more social interaction we have, the more we are reminded of possibilities."

However, Dr. Broom warns that we shouldn't assume people will always be better off in paid work. "We have done some work which has shown that in terms of mental health, people in poor-quality jobs are worse off than the unemployed, as opposed to those who are out of the workforce, such as stay-at-home mums," she says. "And for a long time we have known that being unemployed is bad for your health."

It all depends on the workplace regime. "We have found that when it comes to mental health, a job that's stressful or insecure, or with poor job control, leaves people worse off," says Dr Broom. "That is a real concern because if these are the kinds of jobs there are going to be more of in future, what the government saves on unemployment benefits it will be spending on medical care."

Family-friendly

In spite of the increasing number of women in the workforce, statistics show that Australian organisations are still not providing enough flexibility for employees to balance work and family demands. The government's Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency says that only one in 10 enterprise agreements contain family-friendly measures.

The balancing act

Full-time lawyer and mother-of-two Sonya Connolly says the benefits she gets from work are mental stimulation and being exposed to a broad range of people. She also says it boosts her self-esteem. But Connolly, whose daughters are four and six, admits balancing full-time employment with the care of her young family does take its toll.

"It is difficult to balance the demands of home and work," Connolly says. "I would like to think that I am a good role model for my girls, in terms of achieving things and being interested in pursuing a career. But I would like to only work three days a week so that I could cook better meals, be more involved with the girls and not be so tired."

Barbara Holmes, director of work and lifestyle consultancy Managing Work Life Balance International, says women can experience stress when they are managing children and a job.

"They are more stressed and a little more tired (than other women in the workforce), and they are more likely to be taking sick leave to cope with their sick children, than for themselves."

However, Holmes agrees that women who are being stimulated in the workplace are benefiting.

It's about me

Men could come to the rescue of working women and at the same time increase their own life expectancy. A Victoria University study, Killing Time, found that while men had more leisure time than women they did not spend it in "meaningful activity".

Many men reported feeling bored or lonely during their free time. Boredom, the study says, is more likely to lead to increased drinking, smoking and time on the couch watching TV, increasing the risk of obesity and diabetes.

 

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