Relationship between parental smoking in the home and the smoking of children: Implications for prevention

Abstract

Introduction: For effective prevention measures to be takes, it is necessary to know in detail when, where and why one starts smoking. Parents smoking, as well as their attitudes towards tobacco has been constantly associated with youngsters smoking. Objective: The main objective of this investigation is to go deeper into the study of the relation between parents and childrens tobacco consumption, more specifically, to determine whether the fact of parents smoking at home constitutes a risk factor related to childrens smoking. Methodology: To achieve this goal, by the end of the school year of 2002/ 2003 a cross-sectional study was carried out on a sample of 1141 students of seven Middle and Junior High Schools of Braga. The prevalence of smoking students in the following groups was measured: children of smoking parent that do not smoke at home; children of smokers that occasionally smoke at home and children of smoker parents that smoke daily at home. Results: The proportion of students smokers is higher in the group whose parents smoke (p=0,004). The results also show that the prevalence of smokers in the group of students whose parents smoke daily at home is higher than the one registered in the group of students whose parents smoke, but do not do it at home. Conclusions: The data of the study allow the conclusion that the tobacco consumption by parents at home is a micro-social risk factor related with the tobacco consumption of the children. To smoke at home is also a way of mistreating children, for nowadays the toxicity of the environmental smoke of tobacco to health is acknowledged, particularly to children and asthmatic people.