"Latchkey kids have more freedom to eat sugary snacks and spend solitary afternoons slumped in front of the TV," said the paper. "Long hours can leave women short of time to prepare healthy family meals, so their children will have TV dinners more often." Tsk-tsk.
But wait a moment. Though we'd hate to rob the Mail of another opportunity to bash working mums over the head, it seems results of the study by University College London's Institute of Child Health are rather more complex.
The most consistent link was between the mother's body mass index (BMI) and child BMI. In other words, mums who were overweight were more likely to have children with weight problems. While there was a link between higher childhood BMI and mums working, there were likely to be other factors at play, said the article from the NHS Knowledge Service.
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