1. Using DNA From Mothers and Children to Study Parental Investment in Children's Educational Attainment.
- Author
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Wertz, Jasmin, Moffitt, Terrie E., Agnew‐Blais, Jessica, Arseneault, Louise, Belsky, Daniel W., Corcoran, David L., Houts, Renate, Matthews, Timothy, Prinz, Joseph A., Richmond‐Rakerd, Leah S., Sugden, Karen, Williams, Benjamin, Caspi, Avshalom, Agnew-Blais, Jessica, and Richmond-Rakerd, Leah S
- Subjects
EDUCATIONAL attainment ,DNA ,PARENT participation in education ,GENETICS ,GENOTYPE-environment interaction ,STATISTICAL matching ,DNA analysis ,MOTHERS ,RESEARCH ,SEQUENCE analysis ,RESEARCH methodology ,MEDICAL cooperation ,EVALUATION research ,COMPARATIVE studies - Abstract
This study tested implications of new genetic discoveries for understanding the association between parental investment and children's educational attainment. A novel design matched genetic data from 860 British mothers and their children with home-visit measures of parenting: the E-Risk Study. Three findings emerged. First, both mothers' and children's education-associated genetics, summarized in a genome-wide polygenic score, were associated with parenting-a gene-environment correlation. Second, accounting for genetic influences slightly reduced associations between parenting and children's attainment-indicating some genetic confounding. Third, mothers' genetics were associated with children's attainment over and above children's own genetics, via cognitively stimulating parenting-an environmentally mediated effect. Findings imply that, when interpreting parents' effects on children, environmentalists must consider genetic transmission, but geneticists must also consider environmental transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
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