Round we go
Posting anything has been a challenge lately. We recently let go of our babysitter, and my husband has been unable to drive because of a chronic health issue. So I’m the driver-in-chief of our two children to their two different schools and have taken on a lot of new household responsibilities. Needless to say, my work and other writing has come to a standstill. I’ve been enjoying the time with my kids, for the most part, and reveling in the fact that my younger child is finally fully toilet trained. So I do things that make me feel good about having ratcheted up my time at home, like plan outings that the children will enjoy. I can’t make every day a big adventure, like going to the zoo. Los Angeles is too much city to navigate for that kind of Mary Poppins-ing of your own kids. Instead I dream up the periodic day trip, like our recent visit to Legoland in Carlsbad, California.
My graduate education is in public health, and I am always thinking in terms of preventative health care, particularly diet and exercise. When I go somewhere like Disneyland or Legoland, I can’t help assessing the experience in those terms. Is the food for sale relatively healthy, or is it predominantly fried and made up of foods laden with sodium and nitrates? How are the portion sizes? Are we moving around much during these 6 hours, or is a sedentary experience? (I count standing in barely moving lines for rides as not moving.) Are the toys and tchotchkes for sale durable and reasonably safe, or one big mound of toxic smells, breakable parts, and plastic that we may as well dump straight into the landfill? So that the rest of my family has fun, I keep my dark thoughts to myself. Pretty soon, I’m having fun despite myself and only barely registering these knee-jerk responses.
Swine flu is still in full swing, according to the news. One would think that I would have that potential health crisis on my mind as I visited a famous theme park. But no. While we did all wash our hands more than usual, the potential exposure to flu didn’t concern me as much as the other epidemic I observed – the epidemic of obesity. Public health officials and journalists have been reeling off statistics for many years that tell us the magnitude of the problem, and how obesity has even spread to other less wealthy nations. We know most of the causes too – lack of physical activity (more time spend in cars and in front of computers and televisions than in motion), easy access to high calorie/low nutrient food, less time available for healthy food preparation, and a host of symptoms of the joy and pain of modern life.
But the proportion of overweight parents and adults is clearly increasing. A simple examination of elementary class photographs reveals it as clearly as any set of government-funded statistics. My grade school class pictures show predominantly lean children with one or two slightly chubby ones. Viewing them next to contemporary group pictures reveal classes full of round children with a few really overweight ones.
One of the benefits of having a babysitter during the week, other than the obvious – the ability to do paid work and relatively painless household errands – is being able to go on a a long walk or run, or go to the gym to exercise. Mothers in Los Angeles with childcare help tend to be thinner than those with no help, while the women (like me) who have to negotiate alone time to exercise (rather than having to stop and wipe a nose or change a diaper), have a tendency to fill out in middle age. A related observation, at least in my experience, is that children from families with nannies seem to be more physically fit. Nanny-less mothers may complain that they don’t like going to the park, citing reasons from “it’s boring” to “there are only nannies at the park”. In any event, seven years as a parent in Los Angeles have shown me that nannies whose job includes taking the kids to the park will do so more often than a parent who has to balance other household responsibilities with the exercise needs of the children.
Another observation to bum us all out is the rounding of the nannies. The mostly Latina women who look after children and homes in Los Angeles are growing more overweight, probably both as a consequence of both assimilation into American culture and the semi-sedentary nature of their jobs. Contrary to what everyone would like to believe, “chasing after a toddler” does not constitute actual aerobic, fat-burning exercise. Seeing the nannies at the park year after year, it’s clear that long commutes from the lower-cost areas of Los Angeles to their workplace in more affluent West LA are adding to the many reasons why maintaining healthy weight has become a luxury that many working-class nannies and their families can’t afford.
When I visit places like Legoland and Disneyland, I see whole families that are much heavier than they used to be when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. The only thin people now are Asian tourists. It’s totally depressing. In fact, when I saw the otherwise wonderful but dystopic movie “Wally”, what made me almost as sad as the view of a trash-filled and unlivable Earth, was the sedentary and meaningless life that the obese human survivors had.
What are we to do as a culture? I have no idea. I just know that in my case, the need for child care (and yes, exercise) was great enough that I had to import my mother from another state to complete our nuclear family village. Now the three of us, my husband, my mother, and I, juggle the kids and their meals and park visits, cleanup, driving, and walks or visits to the gym. In our case, it took a village to raise these kids without sacrificing our own health. The only way I have to quantify our efforts are my mother’s blood sugar levels and my own weight. A type 2 diabetic, my mother should regularly measure her fasting blood sugar. Her numbers are healthier than they have been in many years. And I am finally sustaining the weight I was before my first child was born. But I know we can’t get cocky about it.
