Pregnant smokers ‘programming habit into children’

Women who smoke while pregnant may be inadvertently ‘programming’ their children to becoming smokers themselves, according to new research.

A study published today in Tobacco Control, a specialist paper of the British Medical Journal, says that children born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy are three times as likely to pick up the habit before the age of 14 compared to children whose mothers did not smoke.

The researchers also write that mothers who smoke while pregnant can expect their children to be doubly likely to take up smoking after reaching 14 years of age.

But the study of 3,000 mothers and children from Brisbane, Australia, which began 25 years ago during their pregnancies, shows that female smokers who gave up while with child only to start again are no more or less likely to have children that smoke compared to women who do not smoke at all.

The authors of today’s report say that their research should provide “yet another incentive” for expecting mothers to give up the habit, at least until giving birth.

“Our findings suggest a direct effect of maternal smoking during pregnancy on young adults’ development of regular smoking and provide yet another incentive to persuade pregnant women not to smoke and to discourage young women from ever taking it up,” they write.