An issue of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics reports a very interesting study (Pool Di Sliva 2010) It was a large scale investigation of children who were growing up in homes in which the adults smoked compared with children growing up in a smoke-free environment. The relation between maternal smoking has a well known association with numerous health problems, such as low birth weight, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), lower respiratory infections and increased asthma severity. What has not been explored is the effect of second hand smoke (SHS) on children growing up in households where there are adult smokers, including or not including the mothers. That is the issue addressed in this investigation.

And it is an important one. According to a 2006 US Surgeon General’s report (General 2006), there are no safe levels of exposure to SHS. It is estimated that at least 50 percent of children in the US live in households with at least one adult smoker and 60 percent of children give evidence of some exposure to SHS. Other recent studies have shown that SHS is associated with other childhood problems such as increased number of dental caries, and food insecurity. Food insecurity may be associated with the fact that money spent on tobacco leaves less money for healthy food.

The present study used a representative national sample of 30,668 children and adolescents aged 6-17 some of whom lived in homes with SHS and others who did not. Effects of SHS were measured by scales of physical impairment and emotional and behavioral problems. Using sophisticated statistical techniques the researchers were able to control for (eliminate the effects of) other factors such as male sex, older age of child, younger age of mother, unmarried mother, maternal depression and below average maternal physical and mental health. Accordingly, the results can be reliably associated with SHS.

And the findings were quite clear. Children growing up in smoking environments were significantly more likely than children growing up in non-smoking households to experience physical and social emotional problems (17.30 percent vs. 9.29 percent). In addition it was also found that the more smokers in the home the greater the risk of the child developing these problems. The authors conclude that children growing up in homes with SHS, even those in which the mothers do not smoke, are at much greater risk for illness than are children growing up in a smoke-free household.

There is no doubt about the message of this study. If there are children in the home, don’t smoke.

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General, U. S. (2006). The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke. Atlanta Georgia, Department of Human Services, Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health promotion, Office on Smoking and Health.

Pool Di Sliva, E.; Liu, Ying Hua; Brenner, Samantha; Weitzman, Michael (2010). "Adult Household Smoking is Associated With Increased Child Behavioral and Emotional Problems." Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics 31(2): 107-115.

The other day I gave a talk at a conference for early childhood daycare providers. During the question and answer period one woman asked a question I have heard often both from parents and child care providers. The woman said that many of the parents who come to pick up their children are concerned that their children are more attached to the person looking after them during the day, than they are to their parents.

What I refer to open parenting I am talking about parents who open their children up to different cultures, different languages, different races and different religions. Such parents are not concerned about bad or good, but rather want to enrich their children’s understanding of the importance, richness and beauty of human diversity. Hawaii is one of the best of examples of open parenting on a broad scale. Interracial marriage is so common there as to approach the norm.

I recall that as a child I saw a movie in which a dead body fell out of a closet. For a long time after that I made sure that there was nothing in our closet before I went to bed. Even so, I would still wake up frightened of what might come out of that closet. Such fears are common in childhood and have many different causes, but seeing something scary at a movie or on TV is a frequent starting point for such anxieties.

In the US today it is estimated that some 80 percent of children six years and younger spend part or full time in out-of-home child care. This reflects the significant increase of mothers of young children in the work force. This new demographic has raised concerns about the impact on infants and young children of being cared for outside the home by non-parental caregivers. Many small studies have provided conflicting answers to this question because of sampling and other factors.