Study: Teens' smoking influenced by older

siblings, parents' lifelong smoking habits

August 5, 2013 | https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2013/Q3/study-teens-
smoking-influenced-by-older-siblings,-parents-lifelong-smoking-habits.html

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Teens who smoke are significantly influenced by whether older siblings
smoke as well as if their parents smoke now or did in the past, according to research from Purdue
University.

"It's no surprise that the children of heavy smokers smoked, but what is surprising is that the
rate of teens whose parents started smoking later in life or who had quit or reduced their smoking was
just as high, if not higher," said Mike Vuolo, an assistant professor of sociology who studies youth
behavior and substance use. "The children of later-life smokers were 29 percent more likely to smoke,
and that number was higher than children of heavy smokers or those whose parents started smoking as
teenagers but had quit or reduced their amount.

"Even though these rates are high, young teens are more likely to smoke if an older sibling
does, or if they live with a parent who is a heavy smoker. Based on these findings, antismoking
prevention for youth really needs to target the children of parents who smoked at any time in their life,
as well as if siblings are smoking."

The findings are published in Pediatrics, and the National Institutes of Health funded the
work. The data is based on 214 adults who have been surveyed regularly since 1988 beginning at age
14 in the Youth Development Study. This data covers the adults up to age 38. The 314 children of
these adults were ages 11-19. Vuolo, who led the study, also worked with Jeremy Staff, an associate
professor of criminology and sociology at Penn State University. The Youth Development Study is
run by the University of Minnesota.

"Parents' influence on youth smoking is not new, but the quality of this data has followed the
parents for more than 20 years and shows the history of their smoking patterns, specifically length and
amount, and how that has affected their children," Vuolo said.

Most previous research also is based on one-time surveys that rely on retrospective feedback
from parents.

Because parents' smoking could be tracked for 24 years, the parents could be separated into
four groups: non-smokers, heavy smokers, light smokers or those who had quit, and late-onset
smokers who didn't start smoking until early adulthood. Eight percent of non-smokers' children had
smoked in the past year and 25 percent the children of heavy smokers (at least half a pack a day)
reported smoking. The data showed that children of parents who started smoking as teenagers and
who had quit or reduced their smoking by age 38 smoked at a rate 23 percent, and the highest
percentage of youth smoking, at 29 percent, was by children of parents who started smoking later in
life in their 20s.

"The similarities for the three smoking groups were surprising," Vuolo said. "I thought the
children of smokers who had reduced their smoking or quit would be significantly lower than the
other two groups. We controlled for many variables, such as socioeconomic status and the
relationship between the parent and child, but nothing stands out why this is. So we'd like to take a
closer look at individual specifics - did parents smoke in front of children or were children exposed to
their efforts to quit? More than half of these parents quit smoking, and some of these parents quit
smoking when their children were young, so how did that influence their children?"

While the influence of parents' smoking history is attention grabbing, Vuolo said it is
important to not overlook the sibling effect.

An older sibling who smokes is 15 times more likely to occur in the heavy smoking
households than the non-smoking households, and a younger sibling is six times more likely to smoke
if they have an older sibling who smokes.

"In fact, if there was a sibling present in the light smoking or the early-onset smoking
environment the effect still holds; it's just that it's much more likely to happen in the heavy smoking
households," Vuolo said.

Vuolo plans to continue looking at this topic as well as similar parental influences in alcohol
use.

"One aspect to keep in mind is that other research shows that heavy smokers are more likely
to have children at younger ages, so they may be overrepresented in this population because they have
teenagers at age 38," Vuolo said. "If we did the same analysis 10 years from now, when the non-
smokers' children are more likely to be teenagers, what would we see?"

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, 765-494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Mom and dad's tobacco use influences teens'
smoking
Wed Jan 28, 2009 5:49pm EST | http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tobacco-use-teens-
idUSTRE50R7PS20090128

(Reuters Health) - Adolescents whose parents smoke are more likely to pick up the habit themselves,
new research confirms.

The effect was particularly strong if young people were exposed to a parent's tobacco use
before their teen years, Dr. Stephen E. Gilman of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and
his colleagues found. But they also found that in children of ex-smokers "that risk goes away if
parents quit," Gilman explained in an interview.

While there is mounting evidence that children of smokers are more likely to be smokers
themselves, less is known about whether one parent has a stronger effect than the other, and whether
the influence of parents on their offspring's smoking behavior is the same throughout childhood and
adolescence, Gilman and his team note.

To investigate, they looked at 559 boys and girls ages 12 to 17. The researchers also spoke
with one parent of each adolescent participant.

Among parents, 62.4 percent had ever smoked in their lives, while 46 percent had met criteria
for nicotine dependence during their lifetime.

Overall, 27.8 percent of the adolescents reported having used cigarettes, with the prevalence
of use increasing with age; 7.2 percent of 12-year-olds said they had smoked, while 61.3 percent of
17-year-olds did.

Each parent independently influenced the likelihood that a young person would start smoking,
the researchers found. A mother's smoking affected sons and daughters' risk equally, but a father's
smoking had a stronger effect on boys than girls, and the smoking habits of fathers who did not live
with their families had no affect on offspring's smoking risk. The longer a parent smoked, the greater
an adolescent's likelihood of starting smoking. Whether or not the parent was actually dependent on
nicotine didn't affect the strength of the relationship.

"What was striking to us is that the effects were strongest at younger ages," Gilman told
Reuters Health. Children who were 12 or younger when their parents were actively smoking were
about 3.6 times as likely to smoke as children of non-smokers. But the adolescents who were 13 and
older when their parents smoked were only about 1.7 times more likely to use tobacco.

There are many other factors that influence the likelihood of becoming a smoker, the
researcher noted, from the media to genetic susceptibility to addiction. Nevertheless, he and his
colleagues write, "a deeper understanding of the intergenerational transmission of cigarette smoking
will provide additional insight into avenues of prevention." And, they add, smoking cessation efforts
for families and parents "will not only reduce the parent's smoking but likely reduce smoking uptake
in subsequent generations."

SOURCE: Pediatrics, February 2009.

Children whose parents smoked are twice as likely to begin
smoking between ages 13 and 21 as offspring of nonsmokers

September 28, 2005 | Joel Schwarz

|http://www.washington.edu/news/2005/09/28/children-whose-parents-smoked-are-twice-
as-likely-to-begin-smoking-between-ages-13-and-21-as-offspring-of-nonsmokers/

Twelve-year-olds whose parents smoked were more than two times as likely to begin smoking
cigarettes on a daily basis between the ages of 13 and 21 than were children whose parents didnt use
tobacco, according to a new study that looked at family influences on smoking habits.

The research indicated that parental behavior about smoking, not attitudes, is the key factor in
delaying the onset of daily smoking, according to Karl Hill, director of the University of
Washingtons Seattle Social Development Project and an associate research professor of social work.

Hill said other elements that influenced whether or not adolescents began daily smoking were
consistent family monitoring and rules, family bonding or a strong emotional attachment inside the
family, and parents not involving children in their own smoking behavior. The latter includes such
activities as asking their children to get a pack of cigarettes from the car or having them light a
cigarette for the parent.

All of these factors are important in delaying or preventing daily smoking, but parental
smoking is the biggest contributor to children initiating smoking, said Hill. It really is a matter of
do as I do not do as I say when it comes to smoking.

The study is one of the first to look at the initiation of daily smoking rather than the
experimental use of tobacco. It defined daily smoking as smoking between one and five cigarettes
daily in the previous 30 days at the time of each interview.

The research is part of the ongoing Seattle Social Development Project supported by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse that is tracking the development of positive and antisocial behaviors
among 808 individuals. They originally were recruited as fifth-grade students from elementary
schools in high-crime Seattle neighborhoods.

For this study, the individuals were interviewed at ages 13, 14, 15, 16, 18 and 21. The group
was nearly equally divided among males and females. Forty-six percent were white, 24 percent were
black, 21 percent were Asian Americans, 6 percent were American Indians and 3 percent were from
other ethnic backgrounds.

The study found differences in daily smoking rates both by gender and racial background.

Overall, 37 percent of the individuals reported daily smoking by age 21 42 percent of the
males and 32 percent of the females.

Whites (43 percent) were more likely to have begun regular smoking by 21 than were blacks
(35 percent) and Asian Americans (24 percent). However, Indians (54 percent) were the group most
likely to have begun daily smoking by age 21.
 Smoking rates predictably increased as the individuals got older. Just a little more than 2
percent had ever smoked daily at 13. That rate increased to 5 percent at 14, 12 percent at 15, 18
percent at 16, and 27 percent at 18.

Parents may feel that they dont matter to their teens, but this study indicates, they really
do, said Hill. It shows that such factors as not smoking, having good family management skills in
setting rules and monitoring behavior, and having a strong emotional relationship with their children
matter until the end of adolescence.

Smoking prevention programs, he said, need components focused on parents, something they
generally ignore, to help reduce adolescent smoking. Such programs are important since tobacco use
is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, accounting for about 440,000 deaths
annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Keeping children from smoking starts with parents and their behavior. Some parents say
they disapprove of teenage smoking, but continue to smoke themselves. The evidence is clear from
this study that if parents dont want their children to start smoking, it is important for them to stop or
reduce their own smoking, Hill said.

Co-authors of the study published in the current issue of Journal of Adolescent Health are J.
David Hawkins, UW professor of social work; Richard Catalano, UW professor of social work and
director of the Social Development Research Group; Robert Abbott, chairman of educational
psychology at the UW; and Jie Guo, a former UW research scientist.