Cardiff researchers believe that fathers who have open discussions with teenagers about smoking may play an important role in stopping their teenagers taking up the habit.
Involving 3,500 teenagers between the ages of 11 and 15, the study showed that when fathers talk with their offspring about the subjects that matter to them, this impacted strongly on the youngster’s decision to smoke or not as they grew up.
The children who took part in the survey, part of the three-year British Youth Panel survey, were asked to monitor how often they had discussions with their fathers on important subjects, rating the frequency from ‘hardly ever’ to ‘most days’.
The children were given license as to which subjects they considered to be significant and the topics varied from individual to individual.
Dr James White, who lead the study, said that health officials need to be more aware of how fathers can impact on their teenager’s choices over whether to smoke. He added that there still needed to be research done into how teenage parenting affects children’s decision over cigarettes.