By JOHN O'NEIL

ow can parents reduce the chances that their children will become sexually active at an early age? One way might be to quit smoking, a new study suggests.

The study, in The Milbank Quarterly, a health care policy journal, was meant to explore what role parental behavior plays in teenagers' behavior problems, including drinking, smoking and early sex.

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Using survey data on 19,000 youths in seventh through 12th grades, the clearest connection found was between parents' smoking and teenagers' sexual activity.

Adolescents whose parents smoked were 50 percent more likely than children of nonsmokers to report having had sex, and more of them had had sex before the age of 15. Heavy drinking by parents or their failure to use seat belts did not appear to affect their children's sexual activity, but was linked to higher rates of teenage drinking and smoking.

An author of the study, Dr. Esther I. Wilder, an assistant professor in sociology at Lehman College, said she did not believe that a direct link existed between smoking by parents and children's sexual activities. "I think that parents who smoke provide a model of unsafe behavior, and create an atmosphere where it's O.K. to live on the edge," she said.