From The Metro:
Children whose mothers smoked heavily during pregnancy are more likely to become career criminals, research suggests.
And the two are linked regardless of factors such as family wealth, the study shows. Children whose mothers smoked heavily were 31 per cent more likely to have been arrested than those whose mothers never smoked.
They were also more likely to be repeat offenders. The increased crime risk is found among children whose mothers had 20 or more cigarettes a day when pregnant, according to the report by Harvard School of Public Health in the US.
Prof Kate Pickett*, from the department of health sciences at the University of York, said: "The study adds to a substantial body of evidence linking smoking in pregnancy to difficult temperament in infants, behaviour problems in children and antisocial behaviour in adult offspring. These relationships seem to be robust and can be seen even after accounting for many differences between women who smoke and those who do not."
For the study, more than 3,700 new mothers were interviewed between 1959 and 1966. In 1999, criminal record checks were carried out on their offspring.
* Ahem: "Professor Kate Pickett is a Cancer Research UK-funded health researcher, and co-author of The Spirit Level."
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22 minutes ago
8 comments:
Yes, and there were no nuclear weapons before women got the vote. This relationship seems to be robust and can be seen even after accounting for many differences between countries where women can vote and that have nuclear weapons.
I'd like to have a quiet chat with our Kate, to assess her mental capabilities, you understand. Nothing more dire than that.
Find a cause. Poverty. Look for correlated evidence supporting it. Make it sound causal. (Spirit Level folks)
I ask them every time in public
Yes but what is actually causing poverty and the wealth divide?
We have enough evidence. Why do you want infinite evidence?. How about we look for the cause?
They are not interested. Because the cause makes them too complicit.
Last time out they were a bunch of socialist home owners. I got the fiercest denial attacks for a long time. I'd rumbled them.
At the risk of, y'know, being scientific, the money quote here is "even after accounting for many differences between women who smoke and those do not".
If it's true that the survey shows that uni-educated women in good jobs who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to have delinquent kids than those who don't, and that secondary-school drop-out women who're on the dole and smoke during pregnancy are more likely to have delinquent kids than those who aren't, it's actually worthwhile and interesting. If the controls miss out some of those factors, then it isn't.
John B,
Yes, but again up to a point.
The sort of person more likely to smoke (Uni educated or not) ios likely to be the sort of person who lets their children run wild a bit. Even after they have been hectored out of smoking. There are less of them in the second (hectored) catergory.
It would be inmpossible to sample for that, so despite those words we still have unfounded statements (I have not read the primaryu research so going out on a limb).
I would be interested to see if these figures stack up say taking into account those who have given up.
If you give up smoking, does this lead in a reduction of delinquincy in your cghildren? Or are you doomed after that first puff to have feral children?
In a separate study, girls named Tracy and Chardonney were found to be more likely to become the parents delinquent children. If only their parents (ie the grandparents) had called their offspring something sensible like Emily or Fiona, the grandchildren would have turned out so much better.
B, indeed. There is a most entertaining chapter in Freakonomics on that very topic.
MW: I read Freakonomics and within the first 2 chapters saw the most disgusting claims made.
Real Reform: Freakonomics - NOT a phenomenon
It was saying things like the reason the crime wave had stopped mid 90's was because, legalised abortion in a limited area of the world had killed off all the potential criminals of the 90's. And that no one realised this and it was important. Yet it failed to state that these people were principally criminals due to poverty.
Its not easy to see this for anyone still firmly connected to the Matrix
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