Friends have a strong influence over whether teenagers move from experimenting with cigarettes to becoming full-fledged smokers -- but so do parents, a new study finds.
The study, which followed 270 teenagers who had become occasional smokers before high school, found that 58 percent made it a daily habit by 12th grade.
But the likelihood of that happening depended partly on friends and parents, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics.
"We
found that parents play an important role in preventing teens' smoking
escalation from experimental to daily smoking," Dr. Min Jung Kim, of
the University of Washington in Seattle, said.
When friends or
parents smoked, teens were more likely to become daily smokers. On the
other hand, they were less likely to become habitual smokers when their
parents had a "positive family management" style -- monitoring their
comings and goings, doling out reasonable punishments for rule-breaking
and rewarding good behavior.
Teens whose parents kept tabs on
them and were non-smokers themselves had a 31 percent chance of
becoming daily smokers. The odds were 71 percent among teenagers with
parents who smoked and were more lax in managing their kids' behavior.
Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE57P43R20090826