Pregnancy Smoking makes you criminal?

If mothers smoke during pregnancy, the offspring could become criminal later. That's what a US study claims. Social status or poverty was ignored in the recent study.

Smoking expectant mothers during pregnancy could negatively affect the child's health and health. This fact is undisputed among scientists and physicians. But a study of the US Harvard University in Cambridge / Massachusetts now wants to prove that smoking also increases the criminal potential of children later. This almost absurd theory is less likely to be related to cigarette consumption as such, but rather to the social circumstances in which the mothers are. However, further studies have shown that especially the neurotoxin nicotine contained in cigarettes can lead to brain damage of the unborn child.

Harvard University researchers have evaluated the criminal records of approximately 4,000 people between the ages of 33 and 40 while reviewing mothers' cigarette consumption during pregnancy. The scientists found that the children's criminal potential increased when the mothers smoked at least one box of cigarettes during the course of pregnancy. According to the researchers, the risk increases by 30 percent. Nevertheless, the authors of the study stated that a clear causal relationship between smoking mothers and criminal children can not be clearly demonstrated. Independent of this study was whether the offspring were male or female.

Related to low causality
The researchers themselves state that the result of the study, although an indication of this supposed context, a clear evidence of a later crime of children due to the consumption of cigarettes of the mothers can not be provided. Thus, unlike in most media published, there is only a very small causal relationship. Only from the data analyzed, the researchers deduce that the risk increased almost 30 percent for a subsequent criminal career when women smoked during pregnancy. Other key factors such as acute poverty, mental and family problems or social status were not included in the study. For example, other study findings indicate that people who have a wealthy status are healthier and therefore smoke less.

Social status of mothers
While Harvard University researchers emphasized that long-term studies had provided evidence for the relationship between mother smoking and offspring criminal offspring. Here one has excluded further factors such as mental illnesses, emotional burdens and family needs or poverty in advance. However, the relationship between passive smoking of children and later psychologically conspicuous behavior was investigated. The researchers therefore conclude that this relationship also exists in the current study. However, the researchers do not name whether other factors such as unhealthy diet or alcohol consumption were added. Because here later behavioral problems of the children were already proven by appropriate previous damage within the pregnancy.

Smoking is harmful to both child and mother
It is undisputed that smoking and alcohol consumption can cause serious health consequences for the unborn child. The development of the child can be damaged sustainably and for life. Based on numerous scientific studies, it has already been found that alcohol and nicotine can lead to behavioral disorders such as ADHD or antisocial behavioral structures such as increased aggressiveness. Pediatrician Prof. Hans-Jürgen Spohr recently warned that low alcohol consumption during pregnancy may later lead to mild problems with concentration, to severe damage in mental and motor development, growth disorders and facial malformations. Striking is, according to Professor Spohr, that 70 percent of alcohol consumers can not live as adults even without care. Nine out of ten of the mothers who drank alcohol also had no work. At least here it becomes clear that social circumstances and psychological impairments also have to play a role in the consumption of cigarettes.

Nicotine damages nerves
The neurotoxin nicotine, which is a toxic component of cigarettes, can increase the propensity to crime. Again, the researchers refer to causality. It is true that in particular neurotransmitter receptors can be damaged by nicotine. This could lead to behavioral problems as criminals prone to repetition often suffer from neurological impairments. Nevertheless, and there is nothing to gloss over, social status plays a major role. The study results can be found in the journal "Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health". (sb, 17.11.2011)

also read
Criminal by smoking during pregnancy?
Pregnancy: abstinence from alcohol is required
Testicle undulation can be treated in time

Image: Oliver Klas