Maternal Smoking During Pregnancy and Child Well-Being: A Burning Issue. ESRI Research Bulletin 2012/4/1

McCrory, Cathal and Layte, Richard (2012) Maternal Smoking During Pregnancy and Child Well-Being: A Burning Issue. ESRI Research Bulletin 2012/4/1. UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

It is well established that smoking can damage your health. Nonetheless, around one third of the Irish population continue to smoke. Irish research (Brugha et al., 2009) suggests that most smokers want to give up and half will have tried in the last year but nicotine is a notoriously addictive substance. One measure of its addictiveness can be gleaned from the fact that around 18 per cent of pregnant women smoke at some point during their pregnancy and 13 per cent continue to smoke right through. A positive message to emerge from recent research is that the rate of smoking in pregnancy in Ireland has fallen over time. Data from the Growing Up in Ireland study show that whilst 28 per cent of mothers whose children were born between 1997 and 1998 reported that they smoked during pregnancy, this had fallen to 18 per cent of mothers whose children were born in 2007. This is a decrease of over 35 per cent in the proportion of women smoking during pregnancy. Evidence from the Slán Survey (Brugha et al., 2009) suggests that smoking rates among women under 45 have declined by less than 5 per cent over the same period, suggesting an increasing sensitivity to the dangers of smoking during pregnancy.

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