Relationships Between Teenage Smoking and Attitudes Toward Women's Rights, Sex Roles, Marriage, Sex and Family

Abstract

This study analyzes the relationships of cigarette smoking to attitudes toward equal opportunities for women, attitudes toward appropriate roles for women and men, and attitudes toward marriage, sex and family. Our analyses utilize data for white high school seniors from the 1985 Monitoring the Future national survey. Smoking was not related to attitudes toward equal opportunities for women, attitudes toward sex roles, or attitudes concerning the parental role. However, students who had favorable attitudes toward cohabitation by unmarried couples and unfavorable attitudes toward marriage were more likely to smoke than students who had more traditional attitudes toward sex and marriage. The association between smoking and non-traditional attitudes toward sex and marriage was observed for both females and males. Additional findings suggest that rejection of conventional values and acceptance of deviance contribute both to non-traditional attitudes toward sex and marriage and to teenage smoking, and this is one reason why non-traditional attitudes toward sex and marriage are associated with smoking.