Is Smoking to Blame for Tot’s Behavior Problems?

Research in recent years has suggested that maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with behavior problems in boys born to those mothers. What’s been unclear is whether maternal smoking in pregnancy might also affect girls and at what ages problems in either gender might crop up. New research published online first in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health suggests that smoking during pregnancy can increase the risk of behavior issues in both boys and girls as young as three years old.

Researchers at the University of York, Hull-York Medical School in England, looked at questionnaires about more than 13,000 three-year-old boys and girls in the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study.

Nearly 10 percent of the moms in the study said they smoked heavily during their pregnancy and 12.5 percent reported smoking lightly. After accounting for factors such as family economic status, education level and maternal drinking or drug use, the researchers found that boys whose mothers smoked persistently throughout pregnancy were at significant risk of hyperactivity and behavior problems, compared to sons of non-smokers.

The young sons of lighter smokers (less than ten cigarettes a day) appeared to be at increased risk for attention-deficit problems, while the sons of heavier smokers were at higher risk for hyperactivity or behavior problems.

The risk for girls were evident but different: The daughters of mothers who smoked either lightly or heavily were at heightened risk only for conduct problems, not attention-deficit issues.