SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Mothers transmit their smoking habits to their daughters and fathers transmit their smoking habits to their sons, a researcher in Spain says.
"Fathers transmit their smoking habits to a statistically significant level to their sons, and the same is true of mothers and daughters," study co-author Maria Loureiro of the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Spain says in a statement.
"However, if a mother smokes it does not seem to impact on the probability of her son smoking, and similarly a father that smokes does not affect his daughter."
The study, published in the journal Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, also finds estimated probabilities of a son or a daughter smoking if both parents smoke is about 24 percent but falls to almost 12 percent if neither parent smokes.
"Anti-smoking policies for young people need to be put in place that will also include the family and social context in which they live," Loureiro says.
Loureiro and colleagues used data from the British Household Panel Survey 1994-2002, which contains detailed information about consumer products, including tobacco, in both two-parent or single-parent households.
