Australian Teens Are Taking Up Smoking So They Can Have Small Babies

Original article on OddityCentral.com – a blog on oddities and wacky news http://www.odditycentral.com/

In what is likely the most disturbing teen trend we’ve ever reported about – and there have been quite a few – pregnant young girls in Australia are turning to smoking tobacco cigarettes to keep their babies’ weight low and make childbirth less painful.

The shocking finding that young Australian pregnant women are more terrified of childbirth pain than the serious adverse affects smoking during pregnancy can have on the fetus – including higher stillbirth rates and increased risk of childhood asthma and allergies – was revealed by a recently published 10-year national anthropological study led by Associate Professor Simone Dennis from the Australian National University. She found that girls as young as 16 are either taking up smoking or increasing their daily cigarette intake in an effort to have smaller babies, due to fears that their young bodies will not be able to handle childbirth.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the teen mothers-to-be were inspired to take on this practice by the health warnings on Australian cigarette packs, some of which state that ‘smoking while pregnant can reduce the weight of your baby’. Rather than being deterred by this, they decided to embrace smoking as a way of keeping their unborn babies’ weight low in hopes of a less painful childbirth. Studies show that smoking mothers are twice as likely as nonsmokers to have lower weight babies, about 200g lighter, on average.