The experiences of women who quit smoking during pregnancy and how they dealt with their spouses' continued smoking

Objective: to explore how pregnant women in Taiwan dealt with their spouses who continued to smoke and with passive smoking during their own process of quitting and abstaining. Design: a qualitative study using an oral history approach. Data were collected via tape-recorded open-ended interviews. All interviews were transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using narrative analysis. Setting: the homes of the participant women living in the district of a regional hospital of eastern Taiwan. Participants: a purposive sample of 10 Taiwanese women who had quit smoking while pregnant was recruited at 1-3 months following the birth of their infants. Findings: five major themes emerged: (1) the women coping with tobacco addiction on their own, (2) creating a non-smoking section or environment at home, (3) dealing with passive smoking, (4) conflict over the wife's sensitivity to her spouse's residual tobacco smell, and (5) allowing the husband to continue smoking to avoid conflicts. Key conclusions: the pregnant women were expected by their spouses to quit smoking, yet the husbands continued to smoke. Women had to struggle to quit smoking on their own. The findings from this study support the need to listen to pregnant women's stories, as this is paramount to understanding their experiences of tobacco-use reduction and cessation, and for developing gender appropriate interventions to support their efforts. Implications for practice: health care providers should encourage and help pregnant women who are willing to quit smoking. This help could be more family-centred instead of focusing on the pregnant women alone, and therefore involve educating the spouse to support his wife. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.