Parents shape their children in a lot of ways, from speech patterns to moral character. Add smoking to that list: According to new research, parents have a huge impact on their child's chance of taking up smoking and developing a nicotine addiction—with the surprising caveat that moms appear to have more influence than dads.
The new study is hardly the first to examine how a family member's smoking might affect their children's likelihood of taking up the habit; in short, the more parents and siblingssmoke, the more likely their children will. Many of those studies, however, rely on kids to report their parents' smoking. Researchers have also given somewhat less attention to the fine details, particularly when it comes to nicotine dependence, rather than smoking per se, as well as how parents and their offspring's race, ethnicity, and gender might influence the decision to smoke.
[For more of this story, written by Nathan Collins, go to http://www.psmag.com/health-an...ease-moms-dont-smoke]
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