Children at the preschool age are most likely to suffer from poor health if they are raised in a home that is chaotic to large extent and is characterized by a lot of noise, disorder and lacking routine. This was the main result that was discovered by a study at the Ohio State University by Claire Kamp Dush.
Dush works in the field of human sciences as an assistant professor; she says that children need routine while they are growing up. If they are raised in an environment that is chaotic and unpredictable, they will not grow up to be healthy and happy individuals. Dush says their study was conducted largely on families with low income levels, with the results showing that the highest levels of disorder were prevalent in those families where the mothers were impoverished. She states that chaos and disorder were not restricted to families from a certain social strata and can be found even in middle and upper classes.
Dush defined this chaos as one that is of a fundamental nature and is not to be confused with the responsibilities of kids being involved in extracurricular activities or parents running errands. The data for the study came from 3288 mothers who were interviewed when their children were at the age of three and then five, most of the mother were either unmarried, belonged to a low income family.
These researchers had applied many measures to signify what constitutes household chaos; they found five common factors in all these homes which include overcrowding, background noise either from the TV or form outside, no fixed bedtime for the child, dirty and cluttered surroundings in an around their homes.
They had also analyzed the work stress that the mothers had to endure; which came from the schedule that they had to maintain, inability to take care of their kids because of work, not enough flexibility to manage family obligations, frequent changes in work schedule. The researchers used these factors as a basis on which they were able to link the child being exposed to chaotic environmental at the age of three and levels of poor health that they displayed at the age of five as a result of this exposure, notes Kamp Dush.
Dush states that the parents are not at fault here as poor finances didn’t allow these parents to give their kids the best, but shows that these parents need flexible jobs that will give them enough time with their families.