Smoking has been linked to a whole list of illness

A fascinating new research project done by the University of York claims that women who do not smoke when pregnant have a better chance of having an “easy going” child. The researchers used statistical data from the Millennium Cohort Study which collected information on 18,000 children born between the years of 2000 and 2002. By comparing the temperaments of children who were born to nonsmokers, mothers who quit when pregnant, and those mothers who did not give up smoking when pregnant they saw a link between cigarettes smoking and child behaviour.

It has been well known for many years that smokers tend to have smaller and less healthy babies but it had never been shown previously that smoking can actually affect the behaviour of a child. Interestingly however while the mothers who had quit tended to have children with the easiest going temperaments those mothers who had never smoked had children slightly more troublesome than those who had quit. This undermines somewhat the connection between smoking and troublesome babies.

The researchers however suggested that the fact that a mother quit smoking to protect her baby shows that she was concerned and therefore a good mother, and this could therefore be the reason why the baby had a calm and less troublesome temperament. The researchers also pointed out that the temperament of the babies was determined in the questioning by the mothers themselves and therefore there is likely to have been a certain amount of bias.

Whatever the case the fact is that smoking has been proven to harm the unborn child and therefore if you smoke when you are pregnant you are putting the future of your children at risk. Smoking has been linked to a whole list of illness which can affect the unborn child and is definitely not worth the risk.

Don’t quit smoking too late. The time is now.