Table 1 Protective behaviours

Rules about smoking at home (and definition of ‘in the home’)

“At home we have a utility balcony, it’s usually there, there’s no way I’ll smoke in the house when the children are there.”

“I smoke only on the balcony and I always close it off (from the rest of the house)”

Limitations of when/where smoking is acceptable:

Car

Interviewer: Do you ever smoke with the kids in the car?

Participant: No, that’s the limit.”

“Smoking a cigarette in the car while the smoke and the cigarette odor remains, it seems shocking to me.”

Limitations of when/where smoking is acceptable:

Stroller

“I regularly smoke while strolling with the carriage because cigarettes are already part of my bag of ‘supplies’.”

“A lot of mothers stroll with the baby carriage and smoke freely. No way will I do that”

Maintaining distance

“I smoke next to them outside, but I don’t smoke ‘on top of their heads’.”

Protective behaviours: smoke-free home

“I don’t smoke inside the house; even if I smoke outside the house I make sure the door is closed so that no smoke comes in.”;

Protective behaviours: at the window

“I smoke at the window…my whole head is outside, I’m almost falling out”.

Protective behaviours: personal hygiene

“I change my shirt after smoking, thoroughly wash my hands, rinse my mouth with mouthwash and try very hard to have no smoke odor on me.”

Greater importance of protecting smaller children

“So while he’s small it’s very important for me that he not be near an environment of smokers… suddenly he seems like a big boy, so it seemed like it was OK to smoke near him”

“When his oldest daughter was a baby, he’d protect her from friends and tell them to keep their distance (when smoking), or remove her from the scene.”

Confidence in protective measures

Participant: “First of all I smoke obviously with all the windows open and if I need to pick up the kids, then I won’t smoke in the car an hour before… I always open the windows, but I don’t go crazy about it, …”

Interviewer: “Do you think it’s effective to reduce exposure to passive smoking?”

Participant: “Opening the windows? …Of course it is!”

Uncertainty regarding protective measures

“I don’t really think that any of it reaches her when we smoke and walk with the stroller, it doesn’t seem reasonable that it would reach her, but it could be that I don’t know enough”.

Participant: “If I’m on the way from work to pick up the children then I’ll smoke my cigarette at the start of the journey and then the window will be open until I get there

Interviewer: And do you think that’s effective?

Participant: No, yes and no. It doesn’t completely get rid of it, it might reduce it.”

Acceptance of partially effective protective measures

“It’s better than nothing. Obviously I know that the odor sticks to things to a certain extent. For sure it still has a certain effectiveness, airing out…”

“If I smoke in the car on my way to picking up the kids, I say to myself: ‘OK, it’ll air out by the time I put them in the car’. But that’s a bunch of bull. It doesn’t totally disappear, even if you leave the window open.”

“I also do it, but it’s bogus. It absorbs into the upholstery. I do it only to ease my conscience.”

“When I travel with ‘A’ in the carriage I open the overhead protective covering so that the smoke goes over it and not beneath it. So he’s somewhat exposed; sometimes he even coughs a bit.”