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Moms who work longer hours are increasing their children's risk of sleep deprivation and obesity, according to a new study.

Researchers said the latest findings are important because many preschoolers may not be getting the amount sleep they need each night.

After analyzing the links between mothers' employment status and their children's weight over time. Researchers also explored other factors like children's sleep, diet and television habits.

"The only factor of the four that we investigated that mediated the relationship between maternal employment status and child obesity was how much sleep the child was getting each night," said lead author Katherine E. Speirs, a postdoctoral research associate in human and community development at the University of Illinois.

The latest study involved 247 mother-child pairs aged from three to five years old. Researchers measured the children's body mass index twice during the study: once at the beginning of the study and another time 12 months later.

Study results showed that 17 percent of the preschoolers were overweight and 12 percent were obese a year later.  66 percent of mothers had full-time jobs, and 18 percent had part-time jobs.

Analysis revealed that children whose moms worked full time got fewer hours of sleep than their counterparts whose moms worked less than 30 hours per week. The study also revealed that children of women who worked full time were significantly more likely to have higher BMIs a year later. Researchers noted that sleep is important in maintaining weight as each additional hour of nighttime sleep that a child lowers BMI by 6.8 percent at the second weigh-in.

"We looked at nighttime sleep in particular, because studies show that the amount of nighttime sleep matters for regulating weight," said Liechty, a professor of medicine and of social work," Speirs said.

"We think that it might be the more hours that mothers are working, the less time they have, and there may be some sort of tradeoff going on, 'Do I spend quality time with my child or do we get to bed early?' And then in the morning, when mothers leave for work, their children also wake up early to get to day care," she added.

"There are lots of characteristics about mothers' employment that are really important to help us better understand the relationship between mothers' employment status and child obesity, such as whether women are working part time voluntarily or involuntarily, or scheduled or nonscheduled hours," co-researcher Chi-Fang Wu, a professor of social work, said in a news release.

The findings were published in the journal Sleep Medicine.