Teenagers and risk-taking: pregnancy and smoking.

ABSTRACT

PIP: Teenage pregnancy and smoking are areas of concern in the UK. All women under age 20 years on December 31, 1995, attending a group practice in Honiton who had had a pregnancy during their teen years participated in a study to explore the relationship between cigarette smoking among female adolescents and their likelihood to become pregnant as teenagers. This group of women was compared with an age/sex/general practitioner matched control group of young women who had not experienced pregnancy while a teenager. Smoking history could be found for 36 of the 37 (97%) women in the teen pregnancy group and 33 (89%) of the women in the control group. 22 of the 36 (61%) women in the teen pregnancy group with known smoking histories had smoked cigarettes, compared to 7 of the 33 (21%) women in the control group, a statistically significant difference at the P0.01 level. These findings suggest that teenagers who become pregnant are more likely to have smoked at some stage than are those who do not conceive as teenagers.