Maternal Smoking During Pregnancy and Perceived U.S. Federal Government Responsiveness in Adulthood: A Family Marker of Distrust Across Two Generations

Adults whose mothers smoked while pregnant with them see the federal government as less responsive. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and its Child and Young Adult study, I establish that association with a plan fixed in advance and ask what it reflects. Among 3,701 respondents born from 1979 through 1990, those whose mothers reported smoking during the pregnancy rated the government 0.21 categories lower on a five-point scale after adjustment (95% confidence interval 0.13 to 0.29). The difference is unlikely to follow the pregnancy: siblings from pregnancies with and without smoking did not differ that way, although the comparison detects a 137-gram birth-weight deficit. Nor does it follow smoking itself: children of mothers who smoked only outside pregnancy resembled those of never-smokers. It extends to distrust of other people, not to interest in politics, and the mothers show the same profile. So do smokers: in the parent generation, they rated the government 0.19 lower than never-smokers and 0.23 lower than their never-smoking siblings. A test planned before its data were obtained confirmed the adult association in the General Social Survey, 1977 through 1994: smokers expressed less confidence in the federal executive and less trust in people. Smoking through pregnancy appears to mark families sharing a distrustful outlook. Its source and transmission remain unidentified.