Vol. 6, No. 1, 2000 Page 7 
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Vol. 6, No. 1, 2000 Page 7 |
Half a dozen studies in the past two years have linked maternal smoking during pregnancy to behavioral disorders in offspring. A new study, this time focusing on urban African-Americans, reports similar findings.
Chris Gibson and colleagues studied a birth cohort of 987 individuals born between 1959 and 1962 in Philadelphia. The researchers collected data on subjects' police records through the age of 18, as well as data on cognitive functioning, school records, p pregnancy and delivery complications, maternal adversity, and family and socioeconomic status.
"Maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy was predictive of those individuals who incurred an early onset of criminal offending," Gibson and colleagues report. The relationship remained significant even after the researchers controlled for demographic, parental, and perinatal risk factors, as well as for neuropsychological test scores.
"Maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy and early onset of criminal offending in an urban African-American birth cohort," presentation to the American Society of Criminology Conference, November 18, 1999. Address: Chris Gibson or Stephen G. Tibbetts, Department of Criminal Justice/Criminology, Tennessee State University, P.O. Box 70555, Rogers-Stout Hall, Room 201J, Johnson City, TN 37614.