Parents, be wary of smoking in front of your children; your cigarette habits are putting your kids at risk of becoming smokers themselves, 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," Mike Vuolo, an assistant professor of sociology who studies youth behavior and substance use at Purdue University, stated in a news release.
The findings were published in the journal Pediatrics. Vuolo lead the study, with help from Jeremy Staff, an associate professor of criminology and sociology at Penn State University.
According to researchers, children of parents who are "later-life smokers" were 29 percent more likely to smoke.
"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," Vuolo said. "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 data collected from the study of 214 adults, up to age 38, who have been surveyed regularly since 1988 beginning at age 14 in the Youth Development Study. There were 314 children collectively of these adults from ages 11-19.
Though the influence of parents' smoking habits on their children is not new, researchers wanted to see how much kids are inclined to partake in the behavior. According to the University's press release, previous research has also been based based on one-time surveys that rely on feedback from parents.
The parents' smoking habits were tracked for 24 years, and 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 University said. "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."
