Effects of Smoking During Pregnancy

Maternal smoking has been found to be a significant risk factor for low birth weight infants, a disadvantage which influences infant mortality, and long-term health outcomes of the surviving infants (Vogler & Kozlowski, 2002, p.241). Particularly in adolescents, of whom one in four is a current smoker, smoking and pregnancy remains a complex issue. Pregnancy compounds the ramifications smoking, as the association between smoking during pregnancy and multiple adverse outcomes, including maternal bleeding, low infant birthweight, infant death, and future delays in child development (Albrecht et al, 2000, p.709). Adolescents tend to engage in risk-taking behaviors despite known dangers, and particularly unwed mothers of low income tend to continue smoking, even when pregnant, causing risk to the fetus and infant.

As each pregnancy is a miracle, the perfect cooperation between the mother's body to protect and nourish the fetus during nine months, it is a miracle that is short-circuited when the mother chooses to smoke. The body's protective systems are limited, and whatever goes into the mother's system goes into the baby's bloodstream through the placenta (Brenneisen-Goode, 1998, p.6). Most pregnant women try to protect their infants by avoiding exposing their unborn children to harmful substances, but some do not, especially the very young. "The less educated the mother, the greater the chance she will continue to smoke during pregnancy (Brenneisen-Goode, 1998, p.6).

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ies among children in recent decades as compared to the 1950s, with several possible reasons. One is that the definition of learning disability has changed, placing more children in that category. Others suggest that children with mild learning problems now receive attention, whereas in the past they were overlooked. And many researchers believe that actual disabilities are rising possibly because of increased cigarette smoking among women of childbearing age. The combined factors of mothers' smoking, workplace toxins, and the capability of physicians allowing greater survival of disabled infants than in the past means that the numbers of children with disabilities is increasing (Medicine and Health, 2003, p.1). During past decades, polio and other diseases caused terrible dangers to infants and children, but not the dangers have shifted, to the effects of mothers who smoke during pregnancy. Pressinger found in a research project that in urban regions in the U.S., the extent of cigarette use by women during pregnancy is as high as 22 percent to 30 percent (p.1). The figures are higher in Canada and in Sweden, up to 57 percent. Pressinger believes that this has important implications for the effects in the offspring, even i

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