Well - Tara Parker-Pope on Health
December 28, 2010, 12:01 pm
The Tans That Bond
By RONI CARYN RABIN

Who says teenagers don’t listen to their parents?

Public health researchers recently published an intriguing report about the indoor tanning habits of college students, based on a survey of more than 200 female students at East Tennessee State University. The report was printed as a letter in The Archives of Dermatology.

The researchers, Mary Kate Baker, a doctoral student, along with Joel James Hillhouse and Xuefeng Liu, wanted to find out two basic pieces of information. First, how old were the students when they had started indoor tanning? And second, who did they go with on their first visit to a tanning parlor?

Often, it turns out, it was their mothers.

Indoor tanning, it seems, has become in many families a mother-daughter bonding ritual, like shopping or going to the hairdresser.

Of the 227 female students surveyed, almost 40 percent had gone to tan for the first time with their mothers. Another 72 had gone with a friend, 22 with an acquaintance and 45 had gone alone. It makes sense that so many would have gone with a parent, Ms. Baker said, since the girls were teenagers and would probably have needed a ride and some money to get to a tanning salon.

What was interesting is that for the girls who were introduced to tanning by their mothers, the habit really took hold. College students whose mothers introduced them to indoor tanning were almost five times as likely as the others to be heavy tanners once they were in college. The heavy tanners used indoor tanning at least twice a month or more.

The ones who went with their mothers first also started around age 14, on average, two years earlier than the others, who started around age 16.

Skin doctors are worried about the link between indoor tanning and skin cancer. The World Health Organization has labeled indoor tanning a Class 1 carcinogen, the same class as tobacco. And some research suggests that indoor tanning may even be addictive.

Many doctors think consumers don’t appreciate — or aren’t aware of — the potential risks of indoor tanning. “I don’t know that any mother would intentionally lead her daughter into a harmful situation,” Ms. Baker said. “Most definitely, we need better education for mothers on the dangers of indoor tanning.”

In addition, some women may dismiss the risk because they value having a tan so much they think it’s worth it.

There’s a lot of contradictory information in the medical literature about whether children model their parents’ healthy behaviors. A recent review of studies on diet suggested it doesn’t really matter what parents do in their own homes because their children are exposed to so many other dietary influences outside the home.

In the case of tanning, Ms. Baker added, warning people about the risk of cancer may not be effective. Mothers are also transmitting messages about the “perfect look,” which in American society often involves a tan, she said. “We need to also try to help people understand that pale can be beautiful as well.”

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