ISTM the OP’s intent was to prove or disprove a statistical link between a person’s smoking vs. their parents’ smoking and especially their Mom smoking while pregnant.
The data is of course self-selected and is so far sparse, but to the degree it “proves” anything it proves there’s no real correlation.
If we sliced it by SES at the formative age for smokers, say 15-25, and also by era I bet we’d see more correlations there. Though it’d take a lot more data points to be truly meaningful statistics rather than a parlor game.
My stepfather smoked most of his life and was on oxygen (emphysema) prior to his death. My mother smoked from time to time, but was able to give it up seemingly effortlessly whenever she felt like it. I started smoking when I was a teen and quit when I was 35 in 1982. I’m pretty sure that my biological father was also a smoker (and an alcoholic), and my brother was a 3-pack a day smoker (and an alcoholic) until forced to quit for health reasons.
My father was a smoker, my mother has never been. I smoked my first cigarette at 16, was an occasional smoker until I finished college and later lived on my own, then ended a heavy smoker (~1 pack /day).
Well it is possible to do a quick GoogleScholar search and find articles like this if one cares to.
Of course the impact, such as it is, could be psychosocial or biological and if biological by way of exposure or by predisposition or could be a marker for social grouping and not only SES in that case. And peer exposures are of higher impact than parents I think.
My mother very likely smoked while pregnant with me. I remember when I was a child she smoked around the house, but not heavily. She used to smoke about 3 times per day, and always at dinner. I have no memory of my dad smoking when I was a child, but he has told me on several occasions that he was a smoker at that time in my life, so I guess he smoked at work or when he went out to parties with my mom.
My dad quit a long time ago. My mom had to slowly step it down. She started by limiting the number of times per day, then changed it to smoking only out on the back porch after dinner. Eventually she quit.
I have never been a smoker. As a child, my brother and I were very much against it and often tried to get mom to quit. It stayed with me. I never picked up the habit. I never started drinking either.
My brother was a non-smoker… until he joined the Navy. When he was discharged, he was a very heavy smoker and has been struggling with quitting ever since.
Dad smoked multiple packs a day. Died from lung cancer at age 54. Mom never smoked. I tried smoking some, but I have probably consumed fewer than 4 packs in my lifetime, and haven’t had a smoke in 15 years or so (I consider myself as having ‘never’ smoked, even though I fiddled with it in my less mature years).
My Dad’s father smoked multiple packs a day, quit in his late 60’s with the onset of emphysema, and managed to live to 92. My dad’s mom never smoked.
My grandpa always maintained that everyone in his generation knew smoking was bad for you, deadly even… he told me ‘no one’ took seriously claims to the contrary. They just didn’t care or think it would happen to them personally. He also told me that despite quitting smoking for nearly 30 years, and struggling to breath because of the emphysema, that he craved cigarettes daily.
…And just want to add, seeing what my dad wen thru for his final 6 years, lung cancer is a fucking horrible way to die. Granted there were some good times (remission), but fuck, what a terribly sad disease…no one deserves lung cancer.
I swear to god, I started smoking in my 20s, and felt I’d been craving it all my life. My mother smoked whilst pregnant, both parents smoked (and in the house) all my life. I really think I was born addicted to it.
I’ve quit now, but I feel something is missing, tugging at me, and always has been. I tend to eat too much, drink too much, and spend too much. Compensation for something I’m missing?
My mother died young, when I was 5 and she did not smoke. My dad smoked but I lived with my non-smoking grandmother most of the time. My dad got throat, then lung cancer and got me and my two step sisters stop smoking kits. It took three tries but I finally quit after 30 years and haven’t had a smoke in about 7 or 8 years.
But I keep saying that once I hit 80, I’ma have me a Newport.
I kinda wonder if people who grow up around a lot of second-hand smoke can develop a craving for nicotine. But I really wonder about people exposed to nicotine in utero. I wonder if it does something to your brain during development. Other drugs taken during pregnancy, if taken often, can, so why not a steady dose of nicotine?
According to my ob/gyn, women who smoke, but quit during pregnancy do their babies a big favor, even if they start again after the baby is born. She said if the parents can refrain from smoking indoors after the baby is born, it’s even better. But she was addressing mainly the birthweight and nutritional effects on pregnancy, and the association with SIDS after birth.
I also wonder if there isn’t a genetic predisposition to addiction, but I still wonder about that pre-natal exposure.
My parents smoked, but fortunately for me, quit before I was born. The day the surgeon’s general report came out, my mother threw out all the cigarettes in the house, and informed my father that they had quit. She’s a little bit of a paranoiac, but it worked for me. It wasn’t so good when we couldn’t have color TV because she was convinced they gave you cancer, but small price to pay for non-smoking parents in the 1970s.
My father wasn’t a smoker. My mother smoked until her 60’s - the day she had to go in for open heart surgery. She had her last cigarette in the car on the way to the hospital, and then put them down. My father died of lung cancer, my mother of a stroke.
I’ve never been a smoker. I’m one of 5 - 1 smoked, the rest of us didn’t.