Working mothers blamed for global warming

A planet-trashing working mother

The rise in the number of working mothers is one of the principle causes of global warming, a new study suggests.

The Centre for Child Wellbeing surveyed fifteen working mothers in Croydon, South London, and found they were less likely than stay-at-home mothers to recycle, more likely to make multiple car journeys and also more likely to vainly and selfishly use environment-harming products such as lipstick and hairspray.

Other experts said there was more work to be done before a firm link could be found between working mothers and climate change, for example more attention needed to be paid to levels of lipstick and hairspray use.

The study also asked the mothers about their children’s habits. It revealed that 100% of working mums put their kids in front of the TV for up to ten hours every day, allowing them to burn hundreds of tonnes of fossil fuels in electricity, while dinner was usually a burger, made from beef raised on land that was previously rainforest.

Said Megan Mallaghy of the Centre for Child Wellbeing: “We’re not trying to attack working mothers or discourage them from working, but our research clearly shows that they are one of the major reasons for climate change. When their kids aren’t in front of their TVs in their rubbish-strewn rooms, they’re on the internet looking at happy slapping videos, consuming resources that normal families could be using to play charades around the aga. On top of that these mothers are driving their enormous cars everyday to their pointless marketing jobs.”

Experts on climate change appeared to welcome the findings. Said Jonathan Primrose of the Institute for Climate change: “The principal engines of global warming are the burning of fossil fuels and the disappearance of the rainforests. We’re glad that the prime cause of both of these factors – working mothers – has been identified. We can now move forward to form policy that will tackle this problem.”

The same children of working mothers took part in an earlier study by the Centre for Child Wellbeing, which found they were more likely to be obese by the age of three. Nearly two thirds of the kids surveyed had learnt how to use a chip pan by the age of two, three quarters could eat a whole Iceland party platter in one sitting and 100% could balance a Macdonald’s happy meal on their stomachs.

Mallaghy said the study hadn’t taken into account working fathers because “there was no such thing.” “What, dads?” she said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”