Cigarette smoking by pregnant women with particular reference to their past and subsequent breast feeding behaviour.

1,790 postpartum women were asked about their smoking habits and baby feeding practices and about a number of other attitudes and physical attributes. For those variables not concerned with baby feeding, our findings generally support previous research; for example, smokers in comparison to non-smokers tended to have more emotional problems, more reproductive failures and babies with lower birth-weights. For baby feeding, we found that smokers tended to have little prior knowledge of breast feeding, favour bottle feeding, have been fed by bottle by their mothers, and wean earlier than non-smokers or ex-smokers. In fact, non-smokers as a group were similar to breast feeders as a group, and smokers like bottle feeders for over 20 characteristics. These similarities were mostly the result of features of smoking and baby feeding behaviour being found in a common personality type; for example, use of tobacco and choice of bottle feeding are probably attributes of nervous, insecure mothers. But some similarities were the result of the influence of tobacco smoke; for example smokers who do breast feed wean earlier, probably because chemicals in tobacco smoke inhibit milk production.