Etiology of Parental Knowledge, Youth Effortful Control, and Externalizing Behaviors: A Study of Evocative-Gene...

Parental knowledge has been established as a protective factor against both youth emotion dysregulation and externalizing problem behaviors. At the same time, externalizing behaviors and dysregulation have been linked to future parental knowledge. However, the etiology and directionality of these associations are not fully understood. Thus, using the twin design, we examined genetic and environmental influences on parental knowledge, its sources (youth disclosure and parental solicitation), and its association with youth adjustment to investigate whether evocative gene-environment correlations contributed to their association, reflecting youth-driven effects.

Families who participated in the Arizona Twin Project (ATP); included 660 twins (32.4% monozygotic, 34.2% same-sex dizygotic, 33.4% opposite-sex dizygotic) assessed at age 13 (M_age = 13.54, SD = 1.14; 51% female, 61% non-Hispanic/Latino White, 25% Hispanic/Latino, 5% African American, 5% Native American, 2% Asian American, and 3% multiracial/other). Primary caregivers reported on youth effortful control and externalizing behaviors, and youth reported on parental knowledge.

Univariate ACE/ADE twin models indicated moderate genetic influences on parental knowledge (42%), its sources of solicitation (59%), and child disclosure (44%), indicating the presence of a gene-environment correlation, where youth adjustment elicits parental knowledge. On the other hand, the largest portion of the covariance between parental knowledge and adjustment was attributed to the shared environment, supporting parent-driven effects. However, sources of parental knowledge also revealed genetic influences on covariances with adjustment, suggesting youth-driven effects.

The twin approach was consistent with bidirectional influences and suggested that future research should investigate additional heritable youth traits that may underlie genetic influences on parental knowledge.