Gendered Calories

Researchers at American University, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago recently conducted a study in which childhood obesity is linked to working mothers.

According to the study, a child's weight increases by about one pound for each 5.3 months the mother works. Researchers aren't sure why. According to canada.com on Feb.7, 2011:

The researchers were unable to clearly explain the findings but theorized that because working mothers have little time to shop for healthy food and prepare meals, they and their children eat more fast- and packaged foods, which tend to be high in fat and calories.

Perhaps one reason why the researchers cannot clearly explain the findings is that they have incorporated a huge bias into the very foundation of their study - gender. They looked for a correlation between absent mothers and fat children and found it, thereby focussing the problem on women exclusively.

(A disclaimer here - I can find only the media reports of the study, which are often skewed. Also, I would really like to know who funded this study.)

Reuters (June 2010) reported on an earlier study done in the UK and published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in which researchers looked at working mothers as one contributing factor amongst several which affect childhood obesity:

So the trend in mothers' employment over the past few decades may be one of the variables contributing to a general erosion in children's diets; the explosion in sugary junk foods on the market, food advertising aimed at kids, and the increasing availability of high- fat, high-sugar fare in schools are among the other factors that have been blamed.

The researchers also considered socioeconomic factors.

I am not disputing the accuracy of the American study, nor am I making a comment on the possible advantages or disadvantages of working mothers.

The point is that a child's weight is influenced by several things, and the composition, quantity, and quality of a child's food, together with level of exercise, is not gendered.

Put another way - it's not the absence of the mother that makes a child fat; it's the absence of proper diet and exercise that makes a child fat. And while mothers traditionally provide those things, it is not only mothers who can do so.

North American kids have a weight problem. And there are many aspects to the problem: availability of junk food, advertising of junk food, lack of education about nutrition, absent parents, irresponsible parents, obese parents, tax subsidies to certain food producers, coercive advertising, not enough exercise...

Sure, working mothers have an effect, but how much easier it is to blame them than to fix the problem and possibly cut into somebody's profit margin, or spend the money really trying to educate people, or putting pressure on governments and companies to ensure the availability of good food, or trying to eradicate poverty.

Hardwiring 101 for Shoppers

I am not a violent person, but do wish from time to time that Charles Darwin would rise from his grave and give some of the "scientists" who pervert his ideas a resounding whack on the head. "YOU ARE WRONG!" Darwin would shout.

I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry when I read Richard Alleyne's article "Shopping styles of men and women all down to evolution, claim scientists" in the Telegraph.co.uk. The "scientist" whose work Alleyne writes about is Daniel Kruger of the University of Michigan: 

"Prof Kruger decided to conduct the study after a winter holiday trip with friends across Europe.

"After exploring sleepy little villages and reaching Prague, the first thing the women wanted to do was shop, Prof Kruger said, and the men could not understand why."

(I swear, I'm not making it up!)

Simply, women like to shop, know about sales and selecting the best quality goods because they were the gatherers in hunter-gatherer societies. When selecting nuts and berries, women had to be discerning and picky and know when the good stuff was available. So today, when shopping for scarves and sweaters, women are driven by the same imperatives. (No, really, I'm not making it up!)

Men, on the other hand, had to be analytical (the laughing/crying response is bubbling up again) and precise. Plan the hunt, which prey. Out and back quickly, no window shopping (maybe it's nausea I'm experiencing).

I am all for academic freedom and Professor Kruger's right to study whatever he wishes to, but I am amazed and angered by the ignorance he displays about Darwin, anthropology, and some obvious objections to his claims. (And I must be fair here. I have read only Alleyne's article about Kruger's work; however, from Kruger's quotes, I find enough material to object to.)

The most obvious is Kruger's use of Darwin. I don't claim to be an expert on Darwin and evolution, but I have read  The Origin of Species and have an interest as a lay person. The whole Galapagos trip made Darwin realize that in isolation, in a particular environment with particular features, species will develop because individuals with certain traits more successful for that environment will be more successful in reproducing. And eventually, the traits are ongoing prominent features which define (in the sense of a biological class definition) a new species.

Kruger makes a sweeping generalization about humans, assuming that in all environments in the very long hunter-gatherer stage of human existence there were no variations in a gendered division of labour regarding subsistence foraging and hunting. In effect, he is saying that all societies, in every geographical environment on the planet were static and homogenous. Sloppy evolutionist thinking here (and very common, too).

Anthropologists know differently. They know that the male hunter/female gatherer divide is not universal. There were many cases in which the roles were often reversed and/or shared, and places in which either hunting or gathering was non-existant because of the geography. The division of food-procuring labour was quite fluid, not the rigid one that Kruger's argument assumes. The variations preclude the universal existence of  hardwired shopping behaviour in women.

At the level of obvious objections, it's hard to know where to start, but a quote from Kruger works well:

Men on the other hand, decided in advance what animal they wanted to kill and then went looking for it. Once it was found - and killed - they returned home.

Does Kruger know that hunter-gatherer societies spanned more than two millions years? His claim is meaningless without details of time and method - like persistence hunting and hunting with weapons - details that are important for evolution. I also dispute the ease Kruger imagines in selecting and finding prey- it is called hunting, after all.

Also, obviously, with tired bodies and carrying a carcass which could spoil or be stolen by other humans or predators, who would stop and pick berries - or browse to look at the attractive yam foliage? Really, do we need evolutionary explanations when simple physical ones will do? Wouldn't similar kinds of limitations exist for gatherers when they had their hands full and were tired?

And, just as with the claims about women and maternal instinct that I discussed earlier this week, Kruger's claims leave out all the people who don't follow his pattern - men who like to shop, browse, and don't know in advance what they want; women who don't like to shop, who want to dash in and get that one specific item; couples who like to shop together; and all the millions of people in the world who neither can, nor want to shop at all. Even shopping isn't universal in the way Kruger understands it.

This steroetyping is insulting to everyone.

Kruger's research begs the question and is unscientific and illogical. I really do wonder whether Kruger has read Darwin. Nonsense like Kruger's is damaging, sometimes funny, but still damaging. More and more I am deeply suspicious of the agenda of some evolutionary psychologists.

And now I'm off to go Christmas shopping; I've planned all the purchases, have a list and just want to dash in, get the stuff and go home! Hmmm.


(man shopping photo credit)