I just ran a little test to see what happens after the game has been unattended for a week..

The family with a nursing mother had an extremely disgustingly messy house but the daughter was only 4 years old.. which means the correct amount of time was applied, but it only affected the house itself as opposed to the people in it. I forgot to check the fridge to see how much food was left in it though >_<

The other family that has a married couple with the wife not nursing also had an extremely dirty house and lost about 1100 units of food.

I think you're on to something Ann, that's a wonderful feature for the game! Thanks so much LDW.

Also, I'm running version .05 from BigFishGames, perhaps it helps to know which versions this applies to since there have been weird differences in games from differentiating companies.