Two Lifestyle Risks Intertwined: Parental Smoking Predicts Child Gambling Behavior at Age 12 Years

Parental smoking can create a toxic environment for child development. A parental smoking lifestyle can predispose children to executive deficits, influencing precocious risk activities. Using a prospective birth cohort design, we examine the association between 2 lifestyle factors by estimating the relative contribution of long-term parental household smoking in predicting subsequent precocious child gambling behavior.

Parents reported on the amount of household smoke exposure from ages 1.5 to 7.5 years for children from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development. The main outcome measure was children's self-report of gambling behavior (at age 12 years).

Sixty percent of parents reported that their children were never exposed to secondhand smoke in the home, while 27% and 13% reported transient and continuous levels of secondhand smoke, respectively. Overall, 16% of children reported gambling participation. When compared with never-exposed children, children exposed to secondhand smoke had 18% more chances of having participated in gambling at age 12 years (odds ratio = 1.18; 95% CI = 1.080-1.293). These results are adjusted for competing explanations and possible individual and family confounders.

Higher levels of early childhood household smoke exposure are associated with greater odds of reporting gambling participation at age 12 years, which is more than several years before it is normative youthful behavior. By connecting the neurotoxic influence of one lifestyle factor on another, we show a nontrivial link between 2 public health issues (smoke exposure and precocious gambling) associated with considerable individual and societal costs that are amenable to community information campaigns.