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Epidemiology and Population Health

Is being childless associated with a woman’s risk of overweight and obesity? Results from a national longitudinal study

International Journal of Obesity volume 47, pages 841–847 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Aim

To examine the association between motherhood status (mothers, voluntarily childless, involuntarily childless) and overweight and obesity over 22 years.

Methods

A total of 4092 women aged 18–23 years were followed from 1996 to 2018. Motherhood status was defined by women’s reports on their fertility, attempts to conceive, use of in vitro fertilisation and fertility hormones, and number of biological children. Associations between motherhood status and overweight and obesity were examined using generalised estimating equations models, adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics, lifestyle factors, depressive symptoms, early life factors, and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).

Results

At age 40–45 years, 12% of women were voluntarily childless and 5% were involuntarily childless. The prevalence of overweight and obesity increased with age and women who were voluntarily or involuntarily childless had higher prevalence of obesity than mothers in all surveys. After adjusting for covariates, compared with mothers, women who were voluntarily childless had higher odds of being overweight (odds ratio [OR], 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.29, 1.09–1.52) and obese (OR, 95% CI: 1.65, 1.29–2.12). Involuntary childlessness was not associated with being overweight (OR, 95% CI: 1.05, 0.82–1.33), and its association with obesity was attenuated after adjusting for PCOS in the final model (OR, 95% CI: 1.40, 0.99–1.98).

Conclusions

Around one in nine Australian women remained voluntarily childless by their late reproductive years. On average, they had higher odds of being overweight and obese than mothers, suggesting that overweight and obesity prevention programs should consider tailoring their advice by motherhood status.

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Fig. 1: Flow chart of the selection of the study population.
Fig. 2: Prevalence of overweight and obesity by motherhood status from Survey 1 (1996) to Survey 8 (2018), N = 4092.

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Data availability

ALSWH survey data are owned by the Australian Government Department of Health and due to the personal nature of the data collected, release by ALSWH is subject to strict contractual and ethical restrictions. Ethical review of ALSWH is by the Human Research Ethics Committees at The University of Queensland and The University of Newcastle. De-identified data are available to collaborating researchers where a formal request to make use of the material has been approved by the ALSWH Data Access Committee. The committee is receptive of requests for datasets required to replicate results. Information on applying for ALSWH data is available from https://alswh.org.au/for-data-users/applying-for-data/.

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Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based was conducted as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health by the University of Queensland and the University of Newcastle. We are grateful to the Australian Government Department of Health for funding and to the women who provided the survey data.

Funding

CYJ is supported by China Scholarship Council (grant number: 202006010042) (https://www.csc.edu.cn/chuguo/s/1844). GDM is an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Leadership Fellow (APP2009577). The funders had no role in study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, the writing of the article, and the decision to submit it for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Chuyao Jin, Leigh R. Tooth, Xiaolin Xu & Gita D. Mishra

  2. School of Public Health and The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Xiaolin Xu

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Contributions

CYJ and GDM contributed to all aspects of the study design. CYJ conducted the data analysis and drafted the manuscript with input from LRT and XLX. All authors were involved in interpreting the data and critically reviewing the manuscript drafts. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chuyao Jin.

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The study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committees of the Universities of Queensland and Newcastle.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Jin, C., Tooth, L.R., Xu, X. et al. Is being childless associated with a woman’s risk of overweight and obesity? Results from a national longitudinal study. Int J Obes 47, 841–847 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-023-01329-x

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