I used to be a heavy smoker, but quit almost 38 years ago. My father was a smoker; my mother wasn’t.
No option for my situation.
Almost no smokers in my extended family, parents never smoked. I started smoking in my late teens as I moved into trade careers (trucking, oil rigs, etc.).
I smoked for a total of 8 years, and quit when I decided to go to college.
My wife’s family are all heavy smokers, she’d been smoking since her teens and she quit with me (33 years ago). Her family members are still heavy smokers, and most of their kids have taken up the habit too. Oddly enough, most are now in their 60’s and appear to be healthy. I had expected to attend several funerals by now.
[waves to panache45] Did you ever claim: “If cigarettes go over 50 cents a pack, I ain’t paying it! I’ll quit!” 
No option for me.
I’ve never smoked. My mother gave up smoking when I was very little but never smoked during her pregnancies. My dad gave up smoking when the surgeon general’s report came out, before I was born.
No options but replying anyway. I’ve never smoked and neither of my parents smoked. My mother’s dad smoked throughout her whole life but she has never smoked. I don’t think either one of my dad’s parents ever smoked. They never smoked when I knew them and my dad has never mentioned them smoking. All of these are biological relationships, no adoptions.
My parents didn’t smoke, but I picked it up in college. Fortunately, it never turned into a dependency.
Both of my parents smoked until they died; in my father’s case, it doubtless killed him. I started around 15 or 16 and smoked till I had a heart attack at 28. That was nearly 52 years ago and since that day I have never touched another cigarette (except to light one for my mother when she was in the full throes of Parkinson’s and it seemed pointless to deprive of one her few pleasures that were left).
My WAG is that the age at which you start is a more important predictor of how hard it will be to stop than your womb experience. People who start in their 20s or later can quit easily, but ones who started in their teens (or earlier) will have a great deal of trouble. When I started in the early 50s, it seemed like everyone smoked and it seemed the most normal thing to do. That, at least, has changed.
I’m a non-smoker; my mother is a non-smoker; my father occasionally smoked, but (mostly) quit when I was a kid (when I was a teenager he would smoke a cigarillo in the summertime, once in a while – Colt’s/Old Port).
My parents never smoked, no one in my extended family smoked. I started smoking the last week of high school in 1976. The guy I was dating was a smoker and kept offering me cigarettes, I think to be polite, and a couple times I accepted, and that was enough.
I got married in 1987 to a smoker and got pregnant in 1989. I hate to admit this, but I smoked when pregnant, but cut back to only a couple a day. I quit when I was in the maternity ward but started again a few months later. Got divorced in 1996.
In 2004 one of my favorite people in the world died of lung cancer and I quit.
My son never smoked and says he never will. My ex-husband continued to smoke and died of a massive heart attack on 12/19/2016. He was 63. The doctor said it was definitely the cigarettes that killed him. Oh yeah, everyone in my ex’s family smoked, his dad died of a heart attack and his mother died of lung cancer. His siblings all still smoke.
My dad smoked and so did two of his wives. I grew up around smoking during my tween and teenager years. I started when I was 14. I was able to ask my stepmother for a cigarette when I wanted one and she’d hand one over without as much as a blink. This was in the mid 70s. I didn’t smoke on a regular basis until I was in my twenties and working full time. A pack was less than $2.00 then. I smoked heavy at times (almost a pack/day) and sometimes not at all for days. I quit all together a few times. December of 1993 I quit for over two decades. Then about a year ago I bought a pack. I was really upset about something - I can’t even remember what it was now. I smoked one cigarette and felt sick as a dog. I gave the pack to someone. There’s nothing good about them. Nothing at all. My kids don’t smoke. I have a 24 year old stepson, a 20 year old son and a 16 year old daughter. I worry about my son. He’s dating a smoker. He told me the other day that he’s tried it, but didn’t like it.
Father who smoked but quit cigarettes before I was old enough to have any memory of it. He quit when the Surgeon General Report on smoking and health was released in 1964. I was 5. Come to think of it I should have some memory of him smoking cigarettes but don’t. He switched to pipes and cigar. Odds are he inhaled 'em but it was not a very frequent habit. What I do remember is his saying how he had not realized how much he was not smelling until he had quit. It was very striking to him. Mom never smoked that I know of anyway.
I’m the youngest of five. One older sister I think smoked cigarettes briefly as a young adult. Me never and I do not believe any of my other sibs did even though they grew up with him smoking more than I did.
Do you think the correlation is exposure as a role model or genetic predisposition?
My mother smoked and drank through all four pregnancies. I guess all I can say is that things were different then.
None of us seem to have any problems from the smoking and drinking. Would we be different if she hadn’t done that? Maybe, but who knows.
My parents are both lifelong smokers; I was born in 1965, and I would not be at all surprised if my mother smoked while she was pregnant with me. In the '60s and '70s, people simply smoked everywhere.
My parents still smoke (dad is 83, mom is 76), despite the fact that they have both fought cancer, and have seen a number of friends die from smoking-triggered lung diseases. They’re both intelligent people, but they acknowledge that they’re addicted to it, and while they will regularly cut back (or stop altogether) for a while, they’ll revert to smoking when stress hits.
By the time that I was in high school, the Surgeon General’s warnings were already on cigarette packages. I had no interest in smoking, and I never picked up the habit – I tried one cigarette in college (while drunk, of course), nearly barfed, and that was that. I’ve had a few puffs on cigars in my adult life, but that’s it. Meanwhile, my sister, who had been pretty bratty with my parents about their smoking when she was a kid (including hiding their lighters) wound up hanging out with rock musicians after she got out of high school, and she’s been an on-and-off smoker ever since.
I’m with Weedy, my parents never smoked, but my brother and I both smoke, and my sister smoked socially for a few years in her late teens and early twenties.
My parents never smoked, but my paternal grandparents did.
I was a smoker late in high school and through college and the Navy.
TLDR: All of the adults smoked but we 2 kids didn’t/don’t.
Almost everyone in my family smoked. Mom, Dad, grand ma and pa, aunts/great aunts, uncles/great uncles all of them puffed. Smoke and ashtrays were part of all our households (1960s and 70s). I tried it at about age 11 or 12 and didn’t take a liking to it. I think my sister puffed a little in HS, but didn’t develop any habit. Dad stopped in his 60s, mom stopped soon after.
None of the choices apply to me. I have never smoked (OK, I tried a couple of times and I thought it was gross and never understood why anyone would do that willingly…) My mom smoked occasionally till the Surgeon General’s report came out in 1964, then she quit. But she was never a hard-core smoker and I doubt that she smoked much when pregnant.
My dad was a smoker and he finally quit when I was in high school - he’d have been close to 40 by then. Of the 5 of us siblings, only our youngest sister smokes occasionally - she’s the only one of us born after 1964, oddly enough. She’s been a bartender for over 30 years, and I expect that might have something to do with it.
Both my father and mother began smoking in college and were extremely heavy smokers (lit the next cigarette with the previous one, smoked while taking a bath, etc.) until they both died of lung cancer at 39 and 46, respectively. My childhood home was so full of smoke that I had constant respiratory problems growing up. I never realized the cause until I spent 6 weeks at an arts camp one high school summer when all the issues ‘magically’ disappeared.
Both my paternal grandfather and maternal grandfather died of lung cancer also and their long, slow, and painful deaths, folowed by those of my parents, made a big impression on me as a child. I have never smoked or even been tempted to try. With my genetic background, if I wanted to off myself, a gun would be quicker and less painful.
I picked up smoking my sophomore year in college. (I was 19). It picked up steam, until I was at a pack or two a day when I lived in Hungary, where cigarettes were cheap and smoking was even more common. Stopped when I was 27 for no apparent reason. My mom smoked growing up and all through when I was in high school. Not sure exactly when she stopped, but maybe around when I was in college? I only have the vaguest memories of my father smoking–he must have quit before I was 5. Similar as me. Just one day stopped smoking.
Neither of my parents ever smoked, and I was not adopted, which pretty much excludes me from any of the options in this poll.
I started smoking at about age 18, and quit (for the third and final time) at age 35. My peer group had a lot more to do with my smoking behavior than any family influence.
Interesting in that the poll assumes either your parents both smoked, or neither of them smoked. Which gives me no options here. I feel so excluded. 