Smoking and drinking behavior before and during pregnancy of married mothers of live-born infants and stillborn infants.

Data from the 1980 National Natality Survey (NNS) and the 1980 National Fetal Mortality Survey (NFMS) are used to describe the drinking and smoking behavior of married mothers before and during pregnancy according to maternal race and Hispanic origin, age, and education. Typically, smokers were white mothers under 25 years of age with a high school education or less, and drinkers were white mothers 25 years of age and older with more than a high school education. When pregnancy was confirmed, reductions in smoking and drinking occurred. However, mothers of stillborn infants were less likely to stop smoking than were the mothers of live-born infants. Although the prevalence of drinking was much higher than was the prevalence of smoking among the mothers included in these surveys, the reduction in drinking was much more pronounced than was the reduction in smoking. For nearly every sociodemographic subgroup, the prevalence of smoking was higher and the prevalence of drinking was lower among mothers of stillborn infants than among mothers of live-born infants. Some of these differences are due to the age-race-health status makeup of the two NNS-NFMS populations sampled, and carefully controlled multivariate analyses are required to specify the relationship of maternal smoking and drinking to birth outcome. This descriptive analysis is the first step in that process.