Discuss the impact of parental influence on childhood smoking

Parental smoking is one of the strongest influences associated with child smoking initiation. Specifically, in households where parents smoked regularly, children were twice as likely to smoke. Additionally, the children of regular smokers were more likely to start smoking earlier in life and were more likely to become heavy smokers. Notably, maternal smoking was a stronger influence than paternal smoking (Melchoir, Chastang, Mackinnon, Galera, & Fombonne, 2009).
The presence of a smoker living in a household signals a tacit endorsement of smoking to other occupants, particularly children and adolescents, which may be mitigated by adherence to a household smoking ban. Whereas some studies have reported that the presence of a smoking parent or parental disapproval of smoking are correlated with the initiation of adolescent smoking behavior, adolescents living with household smoking bans perceive both lower social acceptability of smoking and lower community-wide prevalence of smoking (Conley Thomson, Siegel, Winickoff, Biener, & Rigotti, 2005). However, the parental influence is neither overt nor omnipotent. For example, household smoking bans did not necessarily produce the same deterrent effect on adolescent smokers that was observed in studies concerning adults.

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