Genetic and environmental influences on parent–son relationships: Evidence for increasing genetic influence during adolescence.

Elkins, Irene J.; McGue, Matt; Iacono, William G.

doi:10.1037/0012-1649.33.2.351

Cited by 182 publications

(206 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

201

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, Karreman, van Tuijl, van Aken, and Deković (2008) have shown that mothers’ use of positive and negative control differed according to the child's level of effortful control, while fathers’ use of the same parenting dimensions did not. Elkins, McGue, and Iacono (1997) have found that father‐son relationships are more influenced by the sons’ genetically influenced behavior, than mother‐son relationships. They consequently postulated that because in certain social contexts less regular involvement is expected of fathers compared to mothers, the degree and nature of father‐child interactions are more influenced by the child's characteristics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parental brain‐derived neurotrophic factor genotype, child prosociality, and their interaction as predictors of parents’ warmth

Avinun

Knafo‐Noam

2017

Brain and Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundParental warmth has been associated with various child behaviors, from effortful control to callous‐unemotional traits. Factors that have been shown to affect parental warmth include heritability and child behavior. However, there is limited knowledge about which specific genes are involved, how they interact with child behavior, how they affect differential parenting, and how they affect fathers. We examined what affects paternal and maternal warmth by focusing on the child's prosocial behavior and parents’ genotype, specifically a Valine to Methionine substitution at codon 66 in the brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene.MethodsData was available from a sample of 6.5 year‐old twins, consisting of 369 mothers and 663 children and 255 fathers and 458 children. Self‐reports were used to assess mothers’ and fathers’ warmth. Child prosociality was assessed with the other‐parent report and experimental assessments.ResultsMothers’ warmth was not affected by their BDNF genotype, neither as a main effect nor in an interaction with child prosociality. Fathers with the Met allele scored higher on warmth. Additionally, there was a significant interaction between fathers’ BDNF genotype and child prosociality. For fathers with the Met allele there was a positive association between warmth and child prosociality. Conversely, for fathers with the Val/Val genotype there was no association between warmth and child prosociality. Results were repeated longitudinally in a subsample with data on age 8–9 years. A direct within family analysis showed that fathers with the Met allele were more likely than Val/Val carriers to exhibit differential parenting toward twins who differed in their prosocial behavior. The same pattern of findings was found with mother‐rated and experimentally assessed prosociality.ConclusionsThese results shed light on the genetic and environmental underpinnings of paternal behavior and differential parenting.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parental brain‐derived neurotrophic factor genotype, child prosociality, and their interaction as predictors of parents’ warmth

Avinun

Knafo‐Noam

2017

Brain and Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Parenting practices-Parents and siblings completed the Parental Environment Questionnaire (PEQ; Elkins, McGue, & Iacono, 1997), a 42-item, factor-analytically derived inventory designed to assess the relationship of each parent-child dyad in the family. The inventory includes 5 scales: Parental Involvement (e.g., "My parent tries to keep up with how well I do in school.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How parents influence school grades: Hints from a sample of adoptive and biological families

Johnson

Iacono

2007

Learning and Individual Differences

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Using the biological and adoptive families in the Minnesota-based Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study, we investigated the associations among genetic and environmental influences on IQ, parenting, parental expectations for offspring educational attainment, engagement in school, and school grades. All variables showed substantial genetic influence, and very modest shared environmental influence. No gender differences were evident. There were significant genetic influences common to IQ and parental expectations of educational attainment, parenting and engagement in school, school grades and engagement in school, parental expectations for offspring educational attainment and school grades, and IQ and school grades. A possible interpretation of the common genetic influences involving parenting is that parents use their own experience with school in shaping the ways in which they parent their offspring.Among developmental and clinical psychologists, parenting is considered to be an important influence on children's academic outcomes (e.g., Gadeyne, Ghesquiere, & Onghena, 2004;Steinberg, Elmen, & Mounts, 1989). This is supported by a large volume of evidence from longitudinal (e.g., Steinberg, Lamborn, Darling, Mounts, & Dornbusch, 1994) and experimental intervention studies (e.g, Forgatch & DeGarmo, 1999), as well as by studies of concurrent associations. Investigations of the mechanisms by which parents exert their effects on academic outcomes tend to follow one of two general traditions (Kellaghan, Sloane, Alvarez, & Bloom, 1993): examination of the effects on children of parental actions, or "what parents do", and exploration of the effects on children of "who parents are". The classic parenting research focusing on socialization activities by parents in the form of emotional tone, disciplinary practices, responsiveness, and expectations (e.g., Baumrind, 1991;Maccoby & Martin, 1983) comes from the "what parents do" tradition, as does research on the quality of the home learning environment provided to children (e.g., Bradley, 1994;de Jong & Leseman, 2001). The "who parents are" tradition is represented by studies positing that socioeconomic and cultural factors carry with them trait-like parental socialization practices with a variety of contextual influences that affect development (e.g., Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001;Gutman & McLoyd, 2000). Of course, the two research traditions do not necessarily reflect distinctCorresponding author: Wendy Johnson, c/o Department of Psyhology, University of Minnesota -Twin Cities, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455, 952-473-1673, wendy.Johnson@ed.ac.uk. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could...

show abstract

“…This includes parental characteristics, parenting style (Perusse, Neale, Heath & Eaves, 1994;Wade & Kendler, 2000), parent-child relationships (Elkins, McGue & Iacono, 1997;McGue, Elkins, Walden & Iacono, 2005;Neiderhiser et al, 2004;Neiderhiser, Reiss, Lichtenstein, Spotts & Ganiban, 2007), and the structure and organization of the home environment (Saudino & Plomin, 1997). Evidence from twin studies (McAdams, Gregory & Eley, 2013;Narusyte et al, 2008; Pike et al, 1996;Saudino & Plomin, 1997) demonstrate that the genetic factors associated with these elements of the rearing environment correlate with those involved in offspring psychopathology.…”

Section: The Confounding Effects Of Genetic Relatednessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for genetic and environmental confounds in associations between parent and child characteristics: A systematic review of children-of-twins studies.

McAdams

Neiderhiser

Rijsdijk

et al. 2014

Psychological Bulletin

163

141

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Parental psychopathology, parenting style, and the quality of intra-familial relationships are all associated with child mental health outcomes. However, most research can say little about the causal pathways underlying these associations. This is because most studies are not genetically informative and are therefore not able to account for the possibility that associations are confounded by gene-environment correlation. That is, biological parents provide not only a rearing environment for their child but also contribute 50% of their genes. Any associations between parental phenotype and child phenotype are therefore potentially confounded. One technique for disentangling genetic from environmental effects is the Children-of-Twins (CoT) method. This involves using datasets comprising twin parents and their children to distinguish genetic from environmental associations between parent and child phenotypes. The CoT technique has grown in popularity in the last decade and we predict that this surge in popularity will continue. In the present article we explain the CoT method for those unfamiliar with its use. We present the logic underlying this approach, discuss strengths and weaknesses and highlight important methodological considerations for researchers interested in the CoT method. We also cover variations on basic CoT approaches, including the extended-CoT method, capable of distinguishing forms of geneenvironment correlation. We then present a systematic review of all of the behavioral CoT studies published to date. These studies cover such diverse phenotypes as psychosis, substance abuse, internalizing, externalizing, parenting and marital difficulties. In reviewing this literature we highlight past applications, identify emergent patterns, and suggest avenues for future research.Keywords: children-of-twins; gene-environment correlation; intergenerational transmission; parenting; psychiatric epidemiology.Theories of parenting propose that parents impact the development of their children in a variety of ways: At one level parental characteristics are predictive of child characteristics -many traits tend to run in families and this is often interpreted as evidence for the impact of parent behavior on child development. For example, anxious parents often rear anxious children (Murray et al., 2008) and it has been suggested that this is because children learn such behavior from their parents (Murray et al., 2008;Rachman, 1977;. Proponents of social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) might suggest that this learning occurs via processes of imitation and modelling, and evidence also indicates that the learning process can be more direct and involve the verbal transmission of information from parent to child (Field & Purkis, 2011).Although children may learn behaviors through imitating and listening to their parents, parents often seek to influence their children's behavior in more direct ways, through the parenting behaviors that they direct towards their child. For example, the punishment and praise of chil...

show abstract

Genetic and environmental influences on parent–son relationships: Evidence for increasing genetic influence during adolescence.

Cited by 182 publications

References 30 publications

Parental brain‐derived neurotrophic factor genotype, child prosociality, and their interaction as predictors of parents’ warmth

Parental brain‐derived neurotrophic factor genotype, child prosociality, and their interaction as predictors of parents’ warmth

How parents influence school grades: Hints from a sample of adoptive and biological families

Accounting for genetic and environmental confounds in associations between parent and child characteristics: A systematic review of children-of-twins studies.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About