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Early life stress (ELS) is associated with lower IQ and academic achievement; however, it remains unclear whether it additionally explains their discrepancy. In 2,401 children (54% girls, 30.2% migration background) from the population-based study Generation R Study, latent factors of prenatal and postnatal (age 0-10) ELS were estimated, and IQ-achievement discrepancy (age 12) was quantified as variance in academic achievement not explained by IQ. ELS was prospectively associated with larger IQ-achievement discrepancy ([beta][subscript prenatal] = -0.24; [beta][subscript postnatal] = -0.28), lower IQ ([beta][subscript prenatal] = -0.20; [beta][subscript postnatal] = -0.22), and lower academic achievement ([beta][subscript prenatal] = -0.31; [beta][subscript postnatal] = -0.36). Associations were stronger for latent ELS than for specific ELS domains. Results point to ELS as a potential prevention target to improve academic potential.

Parental psychopathology can affect child functioning, and vice versa. We examined bidirectional associations between parent and offspring psychopathology in 5,536 children and their parents. We asked three questions: (a) are parent‐to‐child associations stronger than child‐to‐parent associations? (b) are mother‐to‐child associations stronger than father‐to‐child associations? and (c) do within‐ and between‐person effects contribute to bidirectional associations between parent and offspring psychopathology? Our findings suggest that only within‐rater bidirectional associations of parent and offspring psychopathology can be consistently detected, with no difference between mothers and fathers. Child psychopathology was hardly associated with parental psychopathology. No evidence for cross‐rater child‐to‐parent associations was found suggesting that the within‐rater child‐to‐parent associations reflect shared method variance. Moreover, within‐person change accounted for a part of the variance observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine the contributions of maternal and paternal age on offspring externalizing and internalizing problems, this study analyzed problem behaviors at age 10-12 years from four Dutch population-based cohorts (N = 32,892) by a multiple informant design. Bayesian evidence synthesis was used to combine results across cohorts with 50% of the data analyzed for discovery and 50% for confirmation. There was evidence of a robust negative linear relation between parental age and externalizing problems as reported by parents. In teacher-reports, this relation was largely explained by parental socio-economic status. Parental age had limited to no association with internalizing problems. Thus, in this large population-based study, either a beneficial or no effect of advanced parenthood on child problem behavior was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]