The influence of parents’ attitudes and behaviours on smoking habits among children

Background. Adolescence is a critical period for the experimentation of risk behaviours. The initiation of substance use is influenced by several factors, including peers’ and parents’ attitudes and behaviours. Objectives. The objective of this study is to measure the influence of parents’ attitudes, habits, permissiveness and rules about tobacco smoking on cigarette smoking of 12-14 years old children. Methods. The sample consisted of 7,079 7th, 8th and 9th grade students enrolled in the EU-DAP Study in Autumn 2004. The study was carried out in seven European countries: Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Greece, and Austria. For this analysis only baseline data were used. The association between recent smoking and gender, socio-economic status of the school area, family structure, parents’ and friends' smoking, family attitudes and rules towards smoking, family's climate, kids’ self-esteem, risk perception, and problem behaviour was analysed through multivariate logistic regression analysis. Results. The analysis showed a higher risk of smoking among females, kids of schools of low socio-economic status, having at least one smoking parent, spending most of their leisure time with smoking friends, of whom parents would allow to smoke, perceiving bad family climate, with low risk perception, high positive beliefs towards cigarette smoking, and having had fights or arguments in the last year. Conclusions. Parents smoking habits as well as their attitudes towards smoking increase the probability of their kids to smoke. Preventive interventions addressed to kids should be complemented with effective interventions on their parents.