‘It’s a powerful urge we parents have, to save our own kids from suffering the same things we did’My parents are smokers. They smoked when I was a child, in the car, in the house and everywhere in between. I was used to having conversations with them through clouds of smoke, until I hit adulthood, at which point smoking, and its adverse health effects, began to disgust and worry me. Now I have children of my own and live in a different country. If I visit my parents, I refuse to let my children breathe in their smoke, so will not stay with them. This decision is met with irritation and the suggestion of ingratitude on my part. It makes me sad that they choose cigarettes over being with my children. Am I being selfish?Smoking is disgusting. Full disclosure requires that I reveal my own hypocrisy here: I’m a former smoker. I started as a teenager, much to the horror of my own parents, who gave up the habit when they had children. When the public no-smoking laws finally took hold in New York City, I dragged my poor friends to the same four restaurants in Manhattan known for turning the other way when their patrons lit up. I regret that it took so long for me to be able to quit for good, and it seems unfathomable to me now that I put my friends, not to mention my lungs, through all that.Speaking from experience, smoking is an addiction that is incredibly hard to kick, but by no means impossible. Fortunately for me, by the time I had my own children, my non-smoking habit was already well established. But then I married into a Greek family. Greece hovers near the top of the world’s biggest smokers list, just behind their Serbian and Bulgarian neighbours. We vacationed there in the summers, where I discovered the beautiful country through a hazy layer of cigarette smoke. Everyone seemed to smoke – with morning coffee, afternoon Nescafé frappés and evening ouzo. I was lucky that my mother-in-law no longer smoked in the house, as she had done when my husband was growing up. Continue reading...
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