Parenting and Children’s Academic Achievement: Testing Gene-Environment Interplay in a Longitudinal Multi-Cohort Study

• In Event: Academic Achievement: What Matters? Insights from Longitudinal, Multi-Cohort, Genetically-Informative Investigations

Abstract

Previous research has shown that parents’ education-associated genetics – summarized in a genome-wide polygenic score – are associated with parental investment in children’s educational attainment. This work illustrates the role of gene-environment interplay in children’s educational attainment. Here we propose to extend this prior work in two ways. First, we study parenting during different developmental stages of a child’s life. Previous studies examined parenting mostly during childhood, when children were between 3-12 years old. However, individual differences in parenting emerge from before a child is born (e.g., in parental behaviors during pregnancy), and continue after childhood, through adolescence (e.g., in the form of parental monitoring) and into adulthood (e.g., in the form of financial transfers to children). We tested whether parents’ education-associated genetics are associated with these changing forms of parental investment into children’s educational attainment, across development. Second, we study the role of fathers’ parenting for children’s educational attainment. Studies of associations between genetics and parenting usually focus on mothers’ parenting. We tested whether these associations were comparable for mothers’ and fathers’ parenting.
We conducted a multi-cohort study, selecting datasets based on their availability of genetic information for at least one parent. Data came from families based in the UK, the US and New Zealand. Together, our datasets comprise information on parenting from over 20,000 mothers and fathers. To study education-associated genetics, we constructed polygenic scores for parents (and, if data were available, for children) based on the most recent genome-wide association study of educational attainment. We tested associations between polygenic scores and parental behavior during different phases of children’s lives (e.g. smoking during pregnancy; breastfeeding in infancy; cognitive stimulation in childhood; parental monitoring in adolescence; financial support in adulthood). We compared associations for mothers and fathers. Where data were available, we also tested potential child-driven effects, i.e. whether children’s education-associated genetics were associated with the parenting they received.
Parents with higher education polygenic scores were less likely to smoke and drink during pregnancy; more likely to breastfeed their infants; provided more cognitively stimulating, warm, sensitive parenting during childhood and more monitoring during adolescence; and were more likely to support their children financially in adulthood. Associations were comparable for mothers and fathers. Analysis of child effects indicated that children’s education polygenic scores were associated with the parenting they received, but this did not explain away most associations with parental behavior. Parents’ genetics may influence children’s outcomes not only via direct genetic transmission, but also indirectly, through shaping parental behavior toward their children. These effects originate before a child is born and persist across the first two decades of a child’s life. The findings provide insights into the role of gene-environment interplay in children’s educational attainment. They also emphasize the importance of incorporating measures of social context into genetics studies, and in the interpretation of genetic associations.

Authors

• Jasmin Wertz, Duke University
  Presenting Author

• Terrie E Moffitt, King's College London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Karen Sugden, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hexuan Liu, University of Cincinnati
  Non-Presenting Author

• Peter T Tanksley, University of Cincinnati
  Non-Presenting Author

• J C Barnes, University of Cincinnati
  Non-Presenting Author

• Avshalom Caspi, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author