Uncertain identities and health-risking behaviour: the case of young people and smoking in late modernity

What do midwives need to understand/know about smoking in pregnancy?

“…48 For women who face emotional, financial or physical challenges on a day-to-day basis, longterm health problems associated with continued smoking are a distant concern when weighed against their immediate problems and the potential relief gained from smoking. 50 Being in command of risk taking behaviours such as smoking may be the only instance in which control may be exerted in an otherwise uncontrollable existence. 48 …”

Food and Eating Practices During the Transition from Secondary School to New Social Contexts

“…Whatever the mechanism by which peer influence operates, uncertainty is 'existentially troubling' (Giddens 1991) and young people need to feel a sense of 'collective belonging' (Fischler 1988), which interacting with peers may offer. Just as Denscombe (2001) found that young people saw smoking as a shared consumer activity that united them with their peers, so young people might use the consumption of food as a way of making sense of a risky society (Miles 2000). It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the incidence of anorexia nervosa peaks when young people are leaving compulsory education [1] (Fombonne 1995) and that onehalf of 15-year-old girls are thought to be trying to lose weight at any one time (British Youth Council 1999), perhaps reflecting pressures to make friends and to be accepted by new peer groups (Paxton et al 1999).…”

“…One-third of 15-year-old girls and 28 per cent of 15-year-old boys smoke regularly (Denscombe 2001). Forty-two per cent of young men aged 16Á/24 years drink more than the recommended weekly amount of alcohol, as do 32 per cent of young women (Sproston & Primatesta 2003).…”

“…This is partly due to the copious changes that subsequent cohorts of young people have experienced since the 1970s and 1980s; fewer opportunities for paid work, higher unemployment, increasing pressure to participate in youth training, further and higher education, and inequalities in pay making it more difficult to move away from the parental home. Some social commentators have argued that these changes in structural context go hand in hand with an increase in personal agency, thereby creating more individualised routes and tributaries on the way to 'adult living' (Denscombe 2001). Young people's lives may be less constrained by traditional structures such as gender and class, resulting in greater uncertainty about the future and, perhaps, more opportunity for risk-taking and experiences that push the boundaries of what is and what is not 'normative' behaviour (Furlong & Cartmel 1997).…”

“…Young people are likely to come into contact with different groups of peers as they negotiate their routes to adulthood (Denscombe 2001), which may both assist in determining what their roles are while adding to the complexity of their everyday lives. This could result in feelings of fragmentation or tension, resolved by balancing a set of different values or behaviours.…”