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The importance of parents’ characteristics for their children’s health is explained by poor living conditions in childhood lead to poverty in adulthood-which affects health and
the transmission of sound or ill health to children. Beyond the obvious common genetic inheritance across generations, parents’ health also has an impact on their children’s health by imparting habits and lifestyles.
Our research found that if a parent smoked when their child was young, the child was much more likely to smoke as an adult. A person’s obesity in later life was more frequent when their parents were smokers and had a problem with alcohol. Obesity was one not only associated with parents having a problem with alcohol it was also associated with parent being smoker. If a person’s father smoked when they were 12, they were almost twice as likely to smoke than people whose father did not smoke at all.
If mothers smoked, it increased the risk of their daughters smoking – but not their sons. The risk that a person would smoke was also higher among those whose father was a manual worker, and who had experienced periods of poverty during their childhood. Our findings should give pause for thought to those who devised the new NHS plans to stop smokers or obese patients from having surgery unless they quit smoking or lose weight.
The decision assumes that these patients’ poor health is self induced, so they are made to choose between facing the consequences of their lifestyle or demonstrating a commitment to change. These sorts of public health policies don’t take into account that lifestyle is strongly associated with circumstances beyond a person’s control, especially their childhood circumstances and their parents’ health and lifestyles.
Restricting their access to treatment appears especially unfair when people do not have equal opportunities to be in good health and to adopt healthy lifestyles. People would only be responsible for the share that isn’t linked to their childhood conditions or their parents’ choices. The study shows that, even without making this distinction between responsibility and true responsibility, the control of people on their health choices and their health status is limited.
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