IS THERE AN ASSOCIATION BETWEEN PRENATAL SMOKING AND CHILDRENS CONDUCT PROBLEMS?
Prenatal smoking predicted children’s conduct problems at age 5 years (F3,1054 = 13.75; P<.001) and age 7 years (F3,1030 = 13.92; P<.001). As expected, boys had higher levels of conduct problems than girls at both age 5 years (t1,1115 = 7.18; P<.001) and age 7 years (t1,1088 = 7.40; P<.001). Figure 1 shows a dose-response relation between the number of cigarettes smoked and the z-transformed measure of conduct problems in both boys and girls. At age 5 years, controlling for sex, children of light, moderate, and heavy prenatal smokers scored 0.33, 0.39, and 0.57 standard deviation units higher, respectively, on the Conduct Problems scale than children of women who did not smoke during pregnancy (Table 1, panel A, model 1). These differences persisted at age 7 years, when children of light, moderate, and heavy prenatal smokers scored 0.38, 0.34, and 0.67 standard deviation units higher, respectively, than children of women who did not smoke during pregnancy (Table 1, panel B, model 1). A
