The genetic and environmental influences on parenting across childhood and adolescence

This symposium uses complementary methods across three papers to examine genetic and environmental influences on parenting. The first paper examines how genetic influences on children’s negative emotionality may evoke warm... [ view full abstract ]

This symposium uses complementary methods across three papers to examine genetic and environmental influences on parenting. The first paper examines how genetic influences on children’s negative emotionality may evoke warm and/or hostile parenting responses from mothers and fathers using a parent-offspring adoption design. The findings suggest that children play an important evocative role in parent-child interactions, and provide evidence that a portion of this association is likely heritable. The second paper examines the relatively understudied role of positive emotions in the parent-child dyad using a sample of toddler-aged twins. Results suggest an association between child positive emotion and maternal warmth and affection that is best explained by shared environmental influences. The third paper explores the relation between parent internalizing symptoms and negative parenting of their adolescent child using a sample of twin parents of an adolescent. Results indicate that the correlation between internalizing symptoms and parental negativity was explained by genetic and nonshared environmental influences, suggesting that, similar genetic influences contribute to both internalizing symptoms and negative parenting. The discussant, an expert in genetic influences on family processes, will discuss the importance of examining emotions and individual characteristics within the parent-child dyad, as well as the advantages of research that considers family relationships as interrelated subsystems that are influenced by genetic factors.