4 ms·

With what we've known about 2nd hand smoke for decades now, I think we can universally say smoking in front of your kids is bad parenting. So it's a really inte

With what we've known about 2nd hand smoke for decades now, I think we can universally say smoking in front of your kids is bad parenting. So it's a really interesting example, what it says about the author that they don't think they are portraying bad parenting. And is it just an American thing? I haven't noticed that English, Irish, or Scottish people smoke all that much. But visiting Germany and seeing the blase attitude towards public smoking was definitely a culture shock.

jefftk 4y ago
> With what we've known about 2nd hand smoke for decades now, I think we can universally say smoking in front of your kids is bad parenting. Is spending time with your kids in front of the fireplace similarly bad parenting? Because the health effects of an open fire indoors are worse.
- throwaway27727 4y ago
  But it's not viewed as bad, which is the point here.
- lukas099 4y ago
  My unconscious judgement is that the smoker is someone who does this all the time (which might not be true) and the fireplace-user is just lighting a fireplace as a special occasion (also not necessarily true). So if I see a scene of a parent smoking, I will judge them as a bad parent, but not really the fireplace user. To answer your actual question, yes, doing something that is worse than smoking near your kids is bad parenting (unless it's a rare enough event to cause negligible harm).
- moron4hire 4y ago
  I'm confused. That's... not how fireplaces work. The exhaust goes up the chimney, not into the room. The heat in the room is radiant heat from the bricks in the chimney. Also, how is one other (potentially bad or not) activity germain to the one being discussed? What about clowns? What about how Swedish fish candies are made?
  - jefftk 4y ago
    > The exhaust goes up the chimney, not into the room. Most of it, yes, but there's still a very large increase in particles in the air, far more than when smoking. > how is one other (potentially bad or not) activity germain to the one being discussed? My parent was saying "given the health effects, you should not smoke in front of your children". I was asking how they squared this with an activity with much larger health effects that I suspect they think is fine to do with your kids.
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      Particulate count is the least of your worries when it comes to cigarette smoke. The tar, acetone, cadmium, carbon monoxide, etc etc etc is going to do a lot more damage. Do you have any evidence that indoor wood fires are more damaging that cigarette smoke?
- karaterobot 4y ago
  I looked around for studies concluding that wood smoke from indoor fireplaces had worse health effects than chronic secondhand smoke exposure. I found a few that link wood smoke and lung cancer, which makes sense to me because wood smoke is a carcinogen. But I didn't find anything claiming it was worse than secondhand cigarette smoke, which is the part of the claim I find unintuitive. Can you point me to whatever source you used to make the above statement?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
    Do those studies link "wood smoke from indoor fireplaces" or just "wood smoke" to lung cancer? The level of smoke exposure from a modern indoor fireplace is considerably less than from an outdoor fire pit. I will happily have my fireplace burning all day long on a subzero winter day, throwing on the occasional fresh log. But if I have a bonfire outside in summer, I need to be standing upwind.
    - karaterobot 4y ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002194/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002194/ is the one I was mainly thinking of. This is about indoor solid fuel burning. They looked at coal and wood, and found very strong effects in coal (duh) but also some effects in wood. But, I didn't see any comparison to cigarettes or secondhand smoke from either of them. It would be really surprising to me if it were the case, because secondhand smoke certainly seems like it creates more particulates in a house, since most wood smoke goes up the chimney. Plus, if you smoke, you're probably not only smoking for part of the year, like with fireplace use. But, my intuition is not a strong argument, so that's why I'd love to see the study.
senko 4y ago
As an European (and an ex smoker, and a parent), I'd say smoking in front of your kids is definitely not a good idea (and smoking in general is bad), but wouldn't go so far to call it bad parenting.
- moron4hire 4y ago
  Well, it's not the worst parenting, for sure. But as you said, "not good" puts it into the "bad" end of the spectrum.
  - manuel_w 4y ago
    My interpretation is that it is this thinking that the author is describing in their article. In short, if someone wasn't prudent, they would't feel to have to edit-out "not good" things. You could take them as just being a part of reality. For the author, certain info (such as him very his usual briefs or she climaxing or someone smoking) is just to add "reality" to the scene. It doesn't say anything about the character per se. Yet, to Americans, it does. To them if it wouldn't say anything about the scene, it wouldn't be included. But that's only true for a subset of topics, them being body/sex stuff and smoking. Nobody would raise an eyebrow if the character was watching a football game. > American readers need body/sex stuff to be told as stories and not as facts (so says my friend Sara Marzullo, about whom more later). The problem is that even if sex always requires storytelling, you can still just show a body—or a feeling, a glitch in the software of life where sex transpires—in a way that is not easy to interpret, or in a way that maybe doesn’t need to be interpreted at all, but that only needs to ring true. And even if this thing I just wrote sounds wholesome and real, somehow American literature—writers, editors, critics, readers—needs sex always to be contextualized. It should be raunchy. Or loving. Or a cautionary tale. It cannot be open-ended. > This is a good chunk of what literature is for me. An opaqueness that affords us openendedness. Openendedness that is based on a feel for the world where details create facts so vivid you can touch them. They make you say « that’s real ». If stuff is put in a story only to create the sense of a story, then often it won’t coalesce into a simulacrum of reality.
  - ok_dad 4y ago
    I think we're also getting caught up in an implicit assumption that "bad parenting == bad parent", which is absolutely not the case. As a parent, I can tell you that every parent does "bad parenting" from time to time due to stress, tiredness, etc. but that doesn't make that parent a "bad parent", just a normal human being.
yakubin 4y ago
I’m from Poland and smoking in public here is everywhere. I go through the ritual of holding my breath countless times a day when I pass smokers, ever since I was a child. My visits to the UK agree with your picture of it. Fortunately I’m moving to the UK, so that aspect of life, among many others, is going to get better.
hardolaf 4y ago
The funny thing is that Germany and the USA have about the same smoking rate (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-r...) but in the USA, it is culturally prohibited in almost every single state or city to smoke around children, in restaurants, in hotels, near primary entrances, or on sidewalks because people feel ashamed for doing it (and in many cases are punished criminally for smoking in those places). So yeah, the attitude is very, very different. Over here, smokers know it is bad for them and do it anyways. In Germany and Austria, many people consider it their way of life and that it isn't actually bad for them.
- browningstreet 4y ago
  Just this summer I spent a few weeks in three European cities. Europe gets extra points for all the outdoor seating, but loses all of them because it's impossible to sit outside and enjoy a coffee or a meal without someone lighting up a cigarette next to them. I do wish Europe would discover non-smoking rules near food & drink.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > The funny thing is that Germany and the USA have about the same smoking rate (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-r https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-r...) but in the USA, it is culturally prohibited in almost every single state or city to smoke around children, in restaurants, in hotels, near primary entrances, or on sidewalks because people feel ashamed for doing it (and in many cases are punished criminally for smoking in those places). So yeah, the attitude is very, very different. Over here, smokers know it is bad for them and do it anyways. In Germany and Austria, many people consider it their way of life and that it isn't actually bad for them. That's very interesting. I'd love to see the comparison between the stats on smoking related diseases in those places that prohibit public smoking and those that do not, given that both places have a similar number of smokers.
drakonka 4y ago
I think the point is that it doesn't matter. It's a scene showing regular people doing regular things. The things they do might be bad, good, or neither, and most good people almost certainly have bad traits (and vice versa). Showing all of those facets of a character doesn't have to be about making some moral point about their goodness or badness. It can just be about showing their humanity.
anigbrowl 4y ago
The question is why the editor feels the need to point it out, rather than letting the writer communicate the image to the reader and the reader form a private opinion about what the image signifies. It's one thing for an editor to say 'this passage is confusing or boring,' quite another to add in personal opinions of fictional or historical characters.

jefftk 4y ago

> With what we've known about 2nd hand smoke for decades now, I think we can universally say smoking in front of your kids is bad parenting. Is spending time with your kids in front of the fireplace similarly bad parenting? Because the health effects of an open fire indoors are worse.

throwaway27727 4y ago
But it's not viewed as bad, which is the point here.
lukas099 4y ago
My unconscious judgement is that the smoker is someone who does this all the time (which might not be true) and the fireplace-user is just lighting a fireplace as a special occasion (also not necessarily true). So if I see a scene of a parent smoking, I will judge them as a bad parent, but not really the fireplace user. To answer your actual question, yes, doing something that is worse than smoking near your kids is bad parenting (unless it's a rare enough event to cause negligible harm).
moron4hire 4y ago
I'm confused. That's... not how fireplaces work. The exhaust goes up the chimney, not into the room. The heat in the room is radiant heat from the bricks in the chimney. Also, how is one other (potentially bad or not) activity germain to the one being discussed? What about clowns? What about how Swedish fish candies are made?
- jefftk 4y ago
  > The exhaust goes up the chimney, not into the room. Most of it, yes, but there's still a very large increase in particles in the air, far more than when smoking. > how is one other (potentially bad or not) activity germain to the one being discussed? My parent was saying "given the health effects, you should not smoke in front of your children". I was asking how they squared this with an activity with much larger health effects that I suspect they think is fine to do with your kids.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    Particulate count is the least of your worries when it comes to cigarette smoke. The tar, acetone, cadmium, carbon monoxide, etc etc etc is going to do a lot more damage. Do you have any evidence that indoor wood fires are more damaging that cigarette smoke?
karaterobot 4y ago
I looked around for studies concluding that wood smoke from indoor fireplaces had worse health effects than chronic secondhand smoke exposure. I found a few that link wood smoke and lung cancer, which makes sense to me because wood smoke is a carcinogen. But I didn't find anything claiming it was worse than secondhand cigarette smoke, which is the part of the claim I find unintuitive. Can you point me to whatever source you used to make the above statement?
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  Do those studies link "wood smoke from indoor fireplaces" or just "wood smoke" to lung cancer? The level of smoke exposure from a modern indoor fireplace is considerably less than from an outdoor fire pit. I will happily have my fireplace burning all day long on a subzero winter day, throwing on the occasional fresh log. But if I have a bonfire outside in summer, I need to be standing upwind.
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002194/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002194/ is the one I was mainly thinking of. This is about indoor solid fuel burning. They looked at coal and wood, and found very strong effects in coal (duh) but also some effects in wood. But, I didn't see any comparison to cigarettes or secondhand smoke from either of them. It would be really surprising to me if it were the case, because secondhand smoke certainly seems like it creates more particulates in a house, since most wood smoke goes up the chimney. Plus, if you smoke, you're probably not only smoking for part of the year, like with fireplace use. But, my intuition is not a strong argument, so that's why I'd love to see the study.

senko 4y ago

As an European (and an ex smoker, and a parent), I'd say smoking in front of your kids is definitely not a good idea (and smoking in general is bad), but wouldn't go so far to call it bad parenting.

moron4hire 4y ago
Well, it's not the worst parenting, for sure. But as you said, "not good" puts it into the "bad" end of the spectrum.
- manuel_w 4y ago
  My interpretation is that it is this thinking that the author is describing in their article. In short, if someone wasn't prudent, they would't feel to have to edit-out "not good" things. You could take them as just being a part of reality. For the author, certain info (such as him very his usual briefs or she climaxing or someone smoking) is just to add "reality" to the scene. It doesn't say anything about the character per se. Yet, to Americans, it does. To them if it wouldn't say anything about the scene, it wouldn't be included. But that's only true for a subset of topics, them being body/sex stuff and smoking. Nobody would raise an eyebrow if the character was watching a football game. > American readers need body/sex stuff to be told as stories and not as facts (so says my friend Sara Marzullo, about whom more later). The problem is that even if sex always requires storytelling, you can still just show a body—or a feeling, a glitch in the software of life where sex transpires—in a way that is not easy to interpret, or in a way that maybe doesn’t need to be interpreted at all, but that only needs to ring true. And even if this thing I just wrote sounds wholesome and real, somehow American literature—writers, editors, critics, readers—needs sex always to be contextualized. It should be raunchy. Or loving. Or a cautionary tale. It cannot be open-ended. > This is a good chunk of what literature is for me. An opaqueness that affords us openendedness. Openendedness that is based on a feel for the world where details create facts so vivid you can touch them. They make you say « that’s real ». If stuff is put in a story only to create the sense of a story, then often it won’t coalesce into a simulacrum of reality.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  I think we're also getting caught up in an implicit assumption that "bad parenting == bad parent", which is absolutely not the case. As a parent, I can tell you that every parent does "bad parenting" from time to time due to stress, tiredness, etc. but that doesn't make that parent a "bad parent", just a normal human being.

yakubin 4y ago

I’m from Poland and smoking in public here is everywhere. I go through the ritual of holding my breath countless times a day when I pass smokers, ever since I was a child. My visits to the UK agree with your picture of it. Fortunately I’m moving to the UK, so that aspect of life, among many others, is going to get better.

hardolaf 4y ago

The funny thing is that Germany and the USA have about the same smoking rate (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-r...) but in the USA, it is culturally prohibited in almost every single state or city to smoke around children, in restaurants, in hotels, near primary entrances, or on sidewalks because people feel ashamed for doing it (and in many cases are punished criminally for smoking in those places). So yeah, the attitude is very, very different. Over here, smokers know it is bad for them and do it anyways. In Germany and Austria, many people consider it their way of life and that it isn't actually bad for them.

browningstreet 4y ago
Just this summer I spent a few weeks in three European cities. Europe gets extra points for all the outdoor seating, but loses all of them because it's impossible to sit outside and enjoy a coffee or a meal without someone lighting up a cigarette next to them. I do wish Europe would discover non-smoking rules near food & drink.
lelanthran 4y ago
> The funny thing is that Germany and the USA have about the same smoking rate (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-r https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-r...) but in the USA, it is culturally prohibited in almost every single state or city to smoke around children, in restaurants, in hotels, near primary entrances, or on sidewalks because people feel ashamed for doing it (and in many cases are punished criminally for smoking in those places). So yeah, the attitude is very, very different. Over here, smokers know it is bad for them and do it anyways. In Germany and Austria, many people consider it their way of life and that it isn't actually bad for them. That's very interesting. I'd love to see the comparison between the stats on smoking related diseases in those places that prohibit public smoking and those that do not, given that both places have a similar number of smokers.

drakonka 4y ago

I think the point is that it doesn't matter. It's a scene showing regular people doing regular things. The things they do might be bad, good, or neither, and most good people almost certainly have bad traits (and vice versa). Showing all of those facets of a character doesn't have to be about making some moral point about their goodness or badness. It can just be about showing their humanity.

anigbrowl 4y ago

The question is why the editor feels the need to point it out, rather than letting the writer communicate the image to the reader and the reader form a private opinion about what the image signifies. It's one thing for an editor to say 'this passage is confusing or boring,' quite another to add in personal opinions of fictional or historical characters.