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Updated: Jan 5, 2026

Using a Comparative Species Approach to Investigate the Neurobiology of Paternal Responses
Published on: September 19, 2011
Using DNA From Mothers and Children to Study Parental Investment in Children's Educational Attainment
Jasmin Wertz1, Terrie E Moffitt1,2, Jessica Agnew-Blais2
1Duke University.
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.
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