Did anyone else's parents smoke in the house

[Hernamewaslola22]

I sort of can't believe they did really. This wasn't years and years ago either, 90s and early 00s. How could they be so selfish?

Tbf, back in the 70s, the dangers of passive smoking weren't understood. It wasn't just in the house - on the bus, in the cinema, you even see chat shows on tv from that time and they're all smoking.

In fact, my mum in law was advised by her GP to take up smoking!! As he thought it would relax her.

So - no i don't think it was selfish back then, tbh. People just did not know. Many of us grew up in clouds of smoke!!

And you could buy candy cigarettes so you could be just like them. Madness

And the smoking section of airplanes!!!

And whilst eating at restaurants.

I bloody hate smoking

Mine did. Still do. They don’t believe in second and third hand smoking. Just think they stink to others (which is bad enough…)

My Mum knew but was unable to give up.

yes.

Yes and the car!!!

My mum smoked whilst pregnant with me.

She gets really defensive if I even jokingly mention it. To be fair I am extremely tall and healthy!

My FIL was a heavy smoker. He was born in the late 1920s, did National Service and in those days smoking was promoted as being cool, good for the nerves, and good for you health. A bit like the way vaping is sold today. He lived into his 80s, but his last 30 years were hell. DH grew up in an environment full of smoke, like many people did, in his early 60s he was diagnosed with fairly minor lung damage. It is controlled at the moment, but will probably worsen in time. He has never smoked himself, and is very anti smoking having seen what it did to his dad. A good friend played in a band in the 60s, in venues where everyone smoked, then worked in offices, again where everyone smoked. This year, he was diagnosed with Pulomonary Fibrosis, has lost over 2 stone, needs oxygen to help him breathe, can't walk more than a few yards without becoming breathless. The dangers of passive smoking are very real and cause massive, life changing issues later in life.

Candy cigarettes. Coloured shedded coconut sold as Spanish Tobacco, liquorice smokers sets for Christmas. I used to love all of these but never took up smoking. Tried it as a teenager but could never see the point of spending so much money on it.

You also used to be able to buy chocolate cigarettes that were rolled I think rice paper or something and came in fake cigarette packets. The one I remember most was marlborough. It was spelled differently but close and the packaging was similar too.

I used to buy them all the time but nobody else seems to remember them. They remember the little white sticks but not those

Bollocks. I remember Roy Castle dying in 1994 from lung cancer caused by secondhand smoke and what a big deal it was in the news

I absolutely do judge my parents for smoking indoors in the 80s and 90s. I don’t know if my mother smoked whilst pregnant with me in the 70s, but knowing her she probably did and anyone with the slightest bit of intelligence would know, even back then, that doing that isn’t a good idea.

In the 70s? They genuinely didn't know. Particularly if it was the early 70s.

My brother, born 1960, was a severe asthmatic. Regularly hospitalised. He had regular appointments at the chest clinic, where the doctor made a big thing about dust. Our house regularly has to be wet dusted and hoovered twice a day. Yet he never said a word about my mum and grandparents smoking,or suggest that they didn't smoke in the house.

In the 60s and early 70s smoking was the norm and even when health issues were publicised, it was only in relation to lung cancer. I'd say it was well into the 80s before not smoking in pregnancy became a thing. In 1988 my neighbour decided to stop while she was pregnant. But it wasn't because of the pregnancy, it was so that they would have stopped by the time the baby was born.

I was born in the early 70s. My parents did not smoke. I remember my mum hating it in the house and did not want others to smoke around us. Yes, people smoked on buses, planes etc and it was socially acceptable.

But we did know that it was not great. I do not agree that everybody was ignorant that it could be dangerous.

And by the 90s there was no excuse.

I hate how rude people are about people who were smoking years and years ago. I'm not really talking about like the 90s and onwards. I mean people saying how thick and disgusting people were smoking in like the 60s and 70s and 80s. It honestly was so common and the effects (especially second hand smoke) were not really known about or mentioned. To say people just "should have known" is ridiculous.
Honestly I'm just waiting for something to be thought of in a similar way in a few years so all younger people can call them thick and disgusting. They "should have known" giving children/teens mobiles phones would cause damage so they were just thick for doing so."

My dad did. It was normal in those days.

I loathe smoking indoors, in fact I loathe smoking altogether, but I think you’re being unfair. 90s and 00s is years and years ago- nearly 30 years- a generation! Smoking in pubs wasn’t banned until the mid 00s and there was an extraordinary fuss at the time about how people’s freedoms were being removed. There was huge opposition to this. In the 90s it was not accepted that you shouldn’t smoke indoors- and people still do, btw, and they smoke in their cars, too.

It is sad though reading that children actually vocalised that they hated the smoke, regardless of what was known. They were coughing, it was stinging their eyes and making them feel sick, and they were being ostracised at school. But the parents refused to stop.

I guess selfishness is often an integral part of addiction.

I was born in the 50s and can remember barely being able to see across the room because of the cigarette smoke. My clothes must have stank.
can remember leaving someone’s house which smelled of cooked vegetables ( I assume their dinner, my mother very rarely cooked fresh veg) My mother sniffed and said how common they were, the smell in their house. Pot, kettle, black I think.a

i’ve never smoked.

What is interesting is that so many of us from the first generation of people who (a) grew up in smoke-filled houses but (b) never smoked ourselves are now reaching our fifties and sixties. I’d be really interested to know if there is any research on whether our generation’s incidence of lung cancer appearing in our later years is higher than would be expected than for people who were never exposed to smoke. But I suppose the problem is that there are no control examples available to compare us to.
(and in a double whammy, we were also getting sunburnt all the time too…)

My unless used to the wallpaper in the lounge was brown and had nicotine running down it 🤮

But surely that's any addiction though? I'm sure there are plenty of children now who hate their parents drinking alcohol. It's very sad. All addiction is. But that's one thing people seem to forget when calling people thick and disgusting. It IS an addiction. And for people that started young it was advertised and even recommended to lose weight! Alcoholics get so much sympathy on here with people calling it an illness etc. But smoking is just disgusting and they should just stop.
My mum started smoking at 11. As did most of her friends and family around that age. Did I wish when I was a child she didn't smoke? Yes of course. I would have smelled of smoke. But it didn't affect any friendships and I wasn't bullied about it. Obviously other people will have different experiences though. But on the plus side for people on here, she died young of a smoking related illness so was never able to be one of those boomers who benefitted from endless pensions and hogged a big house.

Thinking back, though, the way that the dangers were communicated was quite damaging, psychologically. Most of us were taught at school how bad smoking was, then we’d come home to our parents smoking and worry about them dying. I identify with stories above of people hiding or damaging the cigarettes. I suppose they had to deter us from smoking ourselves, but it was scary and worrying.

I was also worried about nuclear war at the same time too!

It’s a question of degree though. Obviously in hindsight to know if behaviours are dangerous before there is evidence.

But it’s the way you respond to the growing body of evidence around you that counts. A sensible parent with an open mind who reads and digests information about the world will modify their behaviour in response to this evidence.

I would judge a parent know smoked in the house now (or even in the 90s) far more harshly than one who did it in the 70s. Frankly anyone who is still doing it today needs a visit from social services.

There is always a progression in terms of the evidence available. At the moment a) phones are ubiquitous and b) there isn’t a hard canon of validation that confirms they are always unequivocally dangerous. dangerous. So being very hardline about phone use makes you an outlier.

But a responsible parent should be alert to the risks by now and at least take an informed approach to their child’s phone use.

My parents were still smoking in the house when I was 16, so 2000. I remember as a child telling my parents about the dangers of passive smoking, and I doubt I’d have made up the information, so I must have got it from somewhere.