While I personally have not done enough research yet on the effects of how acquiring the habit of smoking in one’s prepubescent years will affect one’s growth and eventual adult height, this study I found does show a correlation between the effects of how one will turn out in terms of final adult height with the amount of smoking one’s mother did while they were still pregnant with us.
The results from previous/past studies looking at how the high levels of smoking the pregnant mother will effect the adult height of the unborn baby show that any stunted growth is minimal. There was a fraction of an inch of decrease in height but that was explained away from researchers stating that there were so many variables to consider and that the slight difference could be just as well explained to be from lower social classes, less ability to get to resources like nutritious food to eat, etc.
In fact, for girls there seems to be no height change at all for girls where their mothers smoked or didn’t smoke. The researchers for this study went back and tried to prove conclusively that if the mother did have a habit of smoking extensively, the baby would ultimately result in some noticeable amount of decreased height.
Study #1: Smoking in pregnancy and development into early adulthood.
Abstract
Follow up analyses of data on the 1958 cohort from the national child development study have shown that the association of smoking in pregnancy with physical and intellectual development diverges between the sexes at age 16, no longer being significantly associated with height in girls. These studies, however, have emphasised that the differences in outcome are small and may be explained by other factors. The analyses have taken account of birth weight and have therefore examined the effects of smoking on subsequent development in addition to this variable. To assess the importance of smoking on development in early adult life and whether the effect is independent of birth weight data from the 1958 cohort at age 23 were analysed. Only weak evidence for a relation between smoking in pregnancy and self reported height of the offspring was apparent once social class, size of family, mothers’ height, and birth weight for gestational age were taken into account. After omission of birth weight from the analyses, however, the average difference in height between subjects whose mothers smoked 20 cigarettes a day or more during the second half of pregnancy and those whose mothers did not was 0.93 cm in men and 1.83 cm in women. A strong association was also evident with the highest qualification achieved by subjects at this age, suggesting a long term relation between smoking in pregnancy and the intellectual development of the offspring.
Analysis
The thing to notice is this “Only weak evidence for a relation between smoking in pregnancy and self reported height of the offspring was apparent once social class, size of family, mothers’ height, and birth weight for gestational age were taken into account”. So there was a different but the difference seems to be small.
It seems that for the almost 1 cm in height difference in men and 1.8 cms of height difference in women, the mother would have to had a smoking habit that involved where they smoked 20 cigarettes a day or more. I personally don’t know anyone who has a nicotine or smoking addiction that requires that they smoke 20 cigarettes a day. I don’t remember how many cigarettes are in a pack but it might be possible that every single pack has 20 in each one. If that is the case, then there might be quite a few people who do smoke 20 cigarettes a day who claim something like “I used to smoke a pack a day”.
For the researchers to give these numbers, they had to take many other factors into account to rule out their association. Other factors that was considered and taken into account were…
- Social class
- Size of family
- Mothers’ height
- Birth weight for gestational age
I would guess that this study should be a good starting point for anyone to use as a reference if they needed to argue/debate with someone to show that the mother’s smoking habits would have a clear affect on the child’s physical development resulting in on average decreased height.
However the emphasize focused in the last sentence is on the fact that smoking has a very dramatic effect on the cognitive and mental abilities of the child when it is growing up. So instead of worrying that smoking is going to make your child shorter, it is probably more useful and relevant to worry that one’s child will end up stupider from one’s smoking habit.
The main thing of course is to stop smoking and give one’s child a better chance at a better life by giving them the best resources and opportunities
