Cigarette Smoking among African American Youth from Single Mother Homes: Examining the Roles of Maternal Smoking and Positive Parenting within an Extended Family Framework

The current study examined the main and interactive effects of three family context variables, maternal smoking, positive parenting behavior, and the quality of the mother’s relationship with another adult or family member who assists with parenting (i.e., coparent), and adolescent smoking among African American youth from single mother homes. The pattern of findings revealed maternal warmth buffered the association between maternal smoking and adolescent smoking, but only in families characterized by high levels of mother-coparent conflict. Results suggest the protective role of maternal warmth may be overlooked in studies that fail to consider the broader family network within which maternal behaviors occur in many African American single mother families. Findings are discussed with regard to their implications for smoking prevention programs aimed at African American youth.