The purpose of this study was to describe adolescents' perceptions of parental influences on their smoking behavior. Thirty-five adolescents, 14 to 18 years old, provided narrative accounts of their smoking histories in semistructured interviews. Most of the participants recognized that their parents played an important role in shaping their experiences with cigarettes. They described several different ways in which parents influenced their smoking behavior. The quality of the adolescents' relationships with their parents emerged as central to how they experienced the environment in which they lived and the ways in which they interpreted messages about smoking. Studies using a systemic approach to examine the role of parents in smoking acquisition are needed to investigate the aspects of parent--adolescent relationships involved in the effective communication of health messages in general and messages about smoking in particular.