Revisiting the Effects of Exposure to Parental Smoking

A group of researchers from the University of Minnesota Psychology Department recently conducted a study in honor of Matt McGue upon the occasion of his retirement. Their study, “Growing Up with Parents Who Smoke: Genetic and Environmental Effects on Offspring Substance Use and Externalizing Psychopathology From a 20-Year Minnesota Study of Adoptive Families,”  builds upon a study supervised by McGue nearly 20 years earlier, “Parental Smoking and Adolescent Problem Behavior: An Adoption Study of General and Specific Effects.”

The researchers considered environmental and genetic influences, including the possible connection between teenagers being exposed to their parents’ smoking and their later substance use, as well as other externalizing outcomes. They examined many potential effects of this exposure, ranging from offspring tobacco and cannabis use to drug dependence to various mental disorders.

Their results indicated that for adoptive offspring there were minimal environmental effects from exposure to parental smoking, while for biological offspring, these effects were stronger. Nonetheless, the effects seem to decline with age for both groups, but only for tobacco and cannabis use.  For nonadopted children specifically, the genetic risk found from parent to offspring indicated a risk for disinhibition in general, as opposed to any one specific behavior (e.g., adolescent substance abuse, addiction, psychopathology). In sum, their study confirms that parental smoking does have an “environmentally mediated effect” on children’s tobacco use, and that for nonadopted children in particular, they are also at genetic risk for general disinhibition traits that can last well into adulthood.