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.

Lunch at the MRA Department Store

As a child of three or four, I was taken uptown regularly by my mother to meet my grandmother for shopping and lunch at Manchester Robertson Allison Department Store - or MRA as everyone called it.

The two buildings in the 1930s photo (below) belong to MRA, but are only two of several that connected down the hill (pictured) and behind. Because of being situated on a hill and comprising several buildings, each with several floors, the interior of the store had a unique arrangement of departments, to say the least - around corners, up or down a few stairs,  into nooks and crannies, and down little passageways.

I remember the tea room being on an upper floor, although my mother says I am wrong. Maybe the importance of the occasions raised the status of the venue in my memory. I remember tablecloths and waitresses in starched uniforms and proper cups, saucers, and teapots. (Always put the milk into the teacup first; then pour the tea, my grandmother insisted.)

Ladies lunching out in the 50's dressed for the occasion - hats, gloves, dresses or skirts, never, never pants. The same rules applied to children, and I remember starched dresses with big bows in the back, white gloves, white socks and black or white patent leather shoes. For the adults, handbags were de rigeur, and occasionally a fur stole. My grandmother had one that actually had the head of the animal attached - to this day, I don't know why anyone thought that was a good thing! I was always a little afraid of that animal around her shoulders; what if it weren't really dead? what if it thought she wasn't looking and bit me when I walked behind her?

My mother and grandmother always dressed very stylishly as well, especially with hats and costume jewellery. The hats weren't necessarily large, but they did have impact. I remember particularly the hats with veils.They made their faces look as if they had black measles, very intriguing for a kid. Even more intriguing were the veils with the odd sequin instead of a dot. Wow, sequined measles!

Lunch was always the same for me: a chicken salad sandwich and a glass of gingerale. I have no idea what my mother and grandmother had, except for the tea. My grandmother used to read tea leaves, but I don't recall her doing so in MRA's at lunch - ladies probably didn't do that sort of thing in public.

Ladies did, however, smoke in public, at least I think more women than just my grandmother did. Her cigarette was always part of her outfit somehow and definitely connected to having tea. My she was stylish, most dramatically so. She would inhale, tilt her head back, and blow a long stream of smoke towards the ceiling. - later I found out that they did this in the movies, and it wasn't really her "move," so to speak. I would always break the straw from my gingerale to the same length as a cigarette and pretend to smoke because that's what grown-up stylish ladies did. I felt very important with that straw cigarette, with my gingerale, in the tea room.

I loved those lunches. My grandmother has been gone now for many years, as has that department store. But my mom and I share the memories of those lunches out at MRA.


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This has been a great week for memory and for synchronicity as well - lunches, department stores, and, grandmothers. Santa, too.

A recent post in ART and ARCHITECTURE, mainly brought me right back to those lunches at the MRA. Yesterday, I found a story about the 13 indigenous grandmothers. Today, searching for a picture of the MRA, I found a story dated December 13/09 about department store Santas, and guess what? The Manchester Robertson Allison Department Store was the first department store in Canada to have a Santa.

My visit with that MRA Santa might just be my only claim to fame: