It’s bad enough the patriarchy sets moms against children as it is; we don’t need to help them. There isn’t anything unfeminist about wanting to do what’s best for your kids, even if that means we have to work harder at some aspects of our lives, AS LONG AS we look at the data for ourselves and can make an informed opinion about what’s truly best for children.

They don’t ask to be here. They depend on us to make sure they grow up OK. If their fathers aren’t stepping up to the plate, does that mean we abandon them? No, we go saw the fathers off at the knees, but we should still BE THERE for our kids.

And for the record I don’t agree with Gupta’s findings. It’s no coincidence that processed food became exponentially cheaper and more available during the time period he’s talking about, and of course the myopic idiot didn’t control for that at all. Far easier to blame women, of course.

My husband grew up in town, but he was allowed a fair amount of range; if his father stepped out the back door and blew the horn, he was supposed to be home in about ten minutes. If he couldn’t hear the horn, he had gone too far. He says all the neighbors cooperated. “Hey, Bill, I just heard your dad blow the horn, better get on home for supper.” He had a bike and rode all over town as a preteen and teenager. When he got a car at sixteen, he also went and found work and has pretty much always been working since.

I don’t live in an area where I’m comfortable just putting my kids outside and saying. “Come back for dinner.” I don’t have land enough to do what my parents did with me, either. So they’re in some organized sports, and they help with yardwork and such as needed, although it’s not the workout I grew up with. But yeah, I’m heavy, he’s heavy, and they’re heavy, and I will admit that the peace found by a child playing a video game is seconded only by a child reading a book. I encourage books.

Conservative: Working moms make us fat!
Liberal: Corporations make us fat!
Conservative: Its lesbians! Or the ethnics!
Liberal: Its the auto companies! Or the oil companies!
Conservative: Personal Responsibility!
Liberal: Aggricultural subsidies!
Conservatives: Clinton!
Liberal: Reagan!

Everyone is singing the same song. Just with different words.

Y’know I’m from an upper class family and I had a stay at home mom, and I’m obese.

If only it were such a quick fix solution “have a stay at home mom and your kids will be thin.”

My mom was a stay at home mom too. I was rail thin until puberty. Then I discovered Doritos were an effective way to hide my breasts…..It was all downhill from there. So I blame Doritos.

P.S., I’ve been Doritos free for 5 years….*sob*.

Wish I could remember the source of this snippet of information, but I heard that one problem with cafeteria lunches is that they’re required to provide a rather large number of calories in lunches; a regulation left over from the days when undernourishment, not obesity was the primary problem. Getting that overturned is the first step to getting healthier school lunches.

Fast Food Nation also mentioned that school lunches, particularly those that are subsidized, are based not on good nutrition but on whichever agricultural commodity gets subsidies. So you get an awful lot of milk and cheese and hamburger, but not much in the way of fresh vegetables.

As much as some people might wish it so, trying to return to an idealized, “perfect” vision of the past does not solve current problems. I’m so tired of the blame game. All it does is shroud the real source of problems in an useless debate.