Parents: Quit Smoking
Before Your Child Turns 8
Excerpt By Alison McCook, Reuters Health

New research suggests that, for parents, quitting smoking before children turn eight or nine appears to steer them away from becoming teenagers who smoke.

U.S. researchers discovered that children of parents who quit smoking before the youngsters entered third grade were 39 percent less likely to be smokers themselves at age 17 or 18 than children whose parents never butted out for good.

Children start to experiment with cigarettes soon after they reach eight or nine, and these findings suggest that parents who smoke while children are faced with the option of smoking themselves are a "providing a model of smoking behavior in the household," study author Jonathan B. Bricker told Reuters Health.

In other words, smoking in front of your children can have both physical and psychological effects, he added.

"By parents quitting smoking, they are not only protecting their children from the health hazards of secondhand smoke, but they are also preventing the children from becoming smokers themselves," said Bricker, who is at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.

He added that he hopes these findings provide "a new motivation for smoking parents to quit."

During the study, published in the journal Addiction, Bricker and his colleagues interviewed both parents of 3,012 third graders, then re-contacted the families when the children reached 17 or 18.

Although having both parents quit in childhood lowered teen smoking rates by almost 40 percent, even one parent's choice to quit during the child's youth reduced the risk of teen smoking by 25 percent compared to families where both parents continued to smoke.

However, the best protection against teen smoking appeared to come from families in which both parents never smoked, in whom children were 71 percent less likely to become smokers themselves, than families in which both parents were still smoking into their child's teen years.

"The best situation of these groups is to be the child of a never smoker," Bricker said.

He added that parents who quit smoking might discourage the habit in their children by becoming somewhat of an "activist." Kicking an addiction for good requires a strong resolution, he said, and parents who don't want to restart smoking may adopt certain habits -- such as speaking negatively about smoking, sitting the family in non-smoking sections of restaurants, or forbidding smoking in the house -- which discourage smoking in kids.

These findings clearly suggest that anti-smoking messages need to target parents early, Bricker said. Distributing pamphlets and hotline numbers, or holding meetings at school may help teach parents of young children the damage their habit can cause, and the "double benefit" that comes from kicking it for good, he noted.

"If they quit, they not only help themselves, they can keep their children from smoking," Bricker said.

He added that he and his colleagues are currently investigating whether parents who quit smoking after their children enter third grade also protect them from teen smoking.

SOURCE: Addiction 2003;98:585-593.

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