Dhe beginning of the year is the time for good resolutions. At the top of many: Quit smoking or don’t start again. But is that really a good idea? Definitely in itself. Not a word is said about the negative effects of cigarettes on health and appearance, not to mention the wallet. No one likes to be dependent, especially not on the tobacco industry. It’s dreadful to look forward to the break in the theater or the ballet so that you can finally smoke one, and it’s ridiculous to console yourself with the fact that you’re smoking “cigarettes without additives”.
And yet there is one group of people for whom it could pay off to start smoking (again) in 2023, or at least make a firm commitment to it: young parents. But how? And why those?
One of the problems with smoking is that it’s so difficult to dose. Many who try to smoke once every few days, or only with alcohol, then simply drink more frequently and are soon back to at least half a pack a day. Man shows himself again and again as a master of self-deception, whereby pride is destroyed by the realization that one is not only the one who creates the brilliant narratives, but also the one who falls for them.
It’s different when you have small children. In Munich, for example, it is considered good manners to drink alcohol in their presence, and playgrounds and beer gardens form a symbiosis in many places. The fact that numerous falls on slides or seesaws could have been prevented if the father had not had a light cigarette in one hand is accepted, especially since the other hand is always free due to the lack of a fag. Smoking in front of children is socially outlawed. It also doesn’t fit the way most parents see themselves. No greater sense of disturbance than reading a bedtime story with stale smoke in your breath, no greater shame than hiding from the children with a cigarette in your mouth.
Downward whirlpool when you start smoking again?
All of this means that the probability of young parents becoming full smokers (again) is low. The so-called non-smoker pope Allen Carr described it in his book “Finally non-smokers!” that if you, as a former smoker, make the mistake of smoking again, you will almost inevitably end up in a downward spiral. Many believed him – and got caught in a downward spiral. If anyone is immune to this, it’s young parents. Through their parenthood, they have acquired a skill, among many other things, that is the envy of both smokers and non-smokers: they can be occasional smokers, possibly even recreational smokers, relatively easily, and do so in the evenings when the children are in bed.
Only: why should they?
Because one or the other disadvantage of smoking is no longer so important for them. Cigarettes affect fertility – but they already have children. Anyone who only smokes in the evening, when the little ones are in bed, smokes less, is therefore less harmful to their health and stays within a financially justifiable range. There is also a natural reduction mechanism: the older the children get, the later they go to bed (or leave the house), so as the years go by you will smoke later and later and therefore less and less.
Now to the genuine advantages: If you only smoke occasionally, you get the chance to feel it as something special. The writer Gregor Hens spoke of the “intoxication of relapse”. Of course, the bangs all the more, the longer the abstinence phase was. Much more important, however, is what you can experience as a couple when you sneak onto the balcony in the evening when the little ones have closed their eyes: you experience yourself as young again, which means above all – as seductive.
Many couples who have children complain that there is less and less time and space left for togetherness. You sign up for the tennis club – and then you don’t have time for it, you’re too tired or you argue on the court whether the serve was off or not. Smoking, on the other hand, is not only easy to organize, it also has something connecting, even conspiratorial. Just think of Claire and Frank Underwood ending their turbulent days with a cigarette on the series “House of Cards”. The key, however, is that you limit the little, sweet secret to the closest circle – as young parents you have practice in that. Those who make it should have the best chance of remaining steadfast in other fields in 2023.
