Adopting and maintaining a healthy lifestyle in low SES families: How the experience of motherhood shapes responses to dietary and physical activity public health guidance

BACKGROUND: Public health guidance and associated interventions seek to bring about change in diet and physical activity behaviours to improve life expectancy and healthy life expectancy in the population. Low socioeconomic status (SES) groups suffer from reduced life/healthy life expectancy compared with the population as a whole. This in-depth qualitative study, investigates the lives and experiences of mothers with young children living in a low SES area in a London (UK) borough, to understand the context in which current public health guidance on diet and physical activity is received and viewed, and how this understanding could be used to inform the development of public health guidance and interventions for this group. METHODS: The mothers (n = 20), were recruited from a Surestart Centre, Children’s Centres and through the local branch of a national charity. The mothers took part in a series of three in depth interviews over two years (2016–2017). Thematic analysis was used to generate an iterative set of codes informing an understanding of motherhood, diet and physical activity. RESULTS: Motherhood was found to be a major factor for understanding and interpreting how women in low SES areas respond to public health guidance on diet and physical activity. The mothers were well informed about dietary guidance, considered that provision of healthy food was critical to the mothering role, but found it difficult to implement the guidance in their own lives. In contrast, physical activity was not seen as integral to the mothering role, although it was acknowledged that it played a part in ensuring that the mothers remained healthy enough to fulfil all their duties. Constrained by the ethic of care, and a lack of material and time resources, the mothers prioritised their family’s health above their own. This study, enabled the mothers to articulate ideas for interventions that would be supportive of a healthy lifestyle and of practical application in their busy lives. CONCLUSIONS: Mothers from this low SES area responded differently to the public health guidance on diet and on physical activity. Whilst providing and modelling a healthy diet was seen as an essential part of the mother’s role, participating in leisure based physical activity was problematic, and unless carefully framed, could be perceived as selfish behaviour, inappropriate for the “good” mother.