“Household chaos has been linked to stress, and stress has been shown to lead to poorer health,” according to The Ohio State University. (Photo : abbamouse/Flickr)

According to new research, kindergarten-age children may have poorer health if their home life is marked by disorder, noise and a lack of routine and if they have a mother who has a chaotic work life.

A team of sociology researchers from Ohio State and Florida State Universities analysed data from a study (Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study). 3,288 mothers were interviewed when their child was 3 and again when he or she was 5 years old. Most of these mothers were either unmarried or had low-income.

The researchers used several measures of household chaos: crowding (more than one person per room), TV background noise (TV was on more than 5 hours a day), lack of regular bedtime for the child, and a home rated as noisy, unclean and cluttered.

They also measured the mother’s work chaos, which included stress caused by the work schedule, difficulty dealing with child care problems during working hours, lack of flexibility to handle family needs and a constantly changing work schedule.

Their results showed that higher levels of household chaos and mothers’ work chaos when their children were age 3 were linked to lower ratings of child health at age 5, even after taking into account initial child health and other factors that may have had an impact.

The most common source of household chaos was noise from a TV, with more than 60 percent of mothers reporting that their TV was on for more than five hours a day.

According to one of the researchers, Kamp Dush, lead author of the study and assistant professor of human sciences at The Ohio State University, chaos has been linked to stress, and stress has been shown to lead to poorer health.

Women with inflexible work schedules may not be able to take their children to the doctor when needed. And a dirty house may increase exposure to toxins and germs.

“Children need to have order in their lives,”

 

“When their life is chaotic and not predictable, it can lead to poorer health.”

However she emphasizes that the findings shouldn’t be used to suggest that the parents are at fault for the chaos in their households.

“We’re not blaming the victims here – there is a larger system involved,” she said.

 

“These mothers can’t help it that their jobs don’t give them the flexibility to deal with sick kids. They can’t afford a larger house or apartment to deal with overcrowding. With their work schedules, they often don’t have time to keep a clean home and they don’t have the money to spend on organizational systems or cleaning services used by middle-class families to keep their homes in order.”

 

“What these mothers and fathers need most is jobs that allow them to maintain regular schedules and have the flexibility to deal with sick children,” Dush said. “Having to maintain two jobs is also detrimental to keeping households free of chaos.”

The findings are published in the journal Social Science & Medicine.