The Contributions of Mothers and Fathers to the Intergenerational Transmission of Cigarette Smoking in Adolescence

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Abstract
Similarity on cigarette smoking among mothers, fathers, and young adolescents (mean age = 12.6 years) and the differential relevance of sociopsychological processes underlying similarity between parent and child were examined in a sample of 201 triads, in which each respondent was interviewed independently. There is a significant and dose-related association between maternal smoking and children's smoking, especially among daughters. Both maternal role modeling and socialization affect lifetime smoking by the child, but only role modeling affects current smoking. The maternal role modeling effect is stronger for daughters than for sons and persists with the inclusion of perceived smoking by the adolescent's close friends in the model. The observed familial concordance on smoking between parent and child cannot disentangle environmental from genetic effects.