TY - JOUR
T1 - Child-Driven Parenting
T2 - Differential Early Childhood Investment by Offspring Genotype
AU - Breinholt, Asta
AU - Conley, Dalton
N1 - Funding Information:
We are extremely grateful to all the families who took part in this study, the midwives for their help in recruiting them, and the whole ALSPAC team, which includes interviewers, computer and laboratory technicians, clerical workers, research scientists, volunteers, managers, receptionists, and nurses. We presented earlier versions of this manuscript at the RC28 Spring Meeting in Frankfurt March 2019, the Population Association of America Annual Meeting April 2019, the Integrating Genetics and the Social Science Conference October 2019, the Princeton Biosociology Lab January 2020, and at the Human Capital, History, Demography & Development seminar at the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan in March 2020. We thank participants at these conferences and workshops for valuable feedback. A special thanks to Anna Sanz-de-Galdeano, Michael Grätz, Lawrence Berger, and five anonymous reviewers for comments on the manuscript. The research leading to the results presented in this article has received funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (grant number: 8025-00008B). The UK Medical Research Council and Wellcome (Grant ref: 217065/Z/19/Z), and the University of Bristol provided core support for ALSPAC. This publication is the work of the authors and Asta Breinholt and Dalton Conley will serve as guarantors for the contents of this paper. A comprehensive list of grants funding is available on the ALSPAC website ( http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/external/documents/grant-acknowledgements.pdf ). This research was specifically funded by the Wellcome Trust and MRC (grant number: 092731). GWAS data were generated by Sample Logistics and Genotyping Facilities at Wellcome Sanger Institute and LabCorp (Laboratory Corporation of America) using support from 23andMe.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s).
PY - 2023/9/1
Y1 - 2023/9/1
N2 - A growing literature points to children's influence on parents' behavior, including parental investments in children. Further, previous research has shown differential parental response by socioeconomic status to children's birth weight, cognitive ability, and school outcomes-all early life predictors of later socioeconomic success. This study considers an even earlier, more exogenous predictor of parental investments: offspring genotype. Specifically, we analyze (1) whether children's genetic propensity toward educational success affects parenting during early childhood and (2) whether parenting in response to children's genetic propensity toward educational success is socially stratified. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Survey of Parents and Children (N = 6,247), we construct polygenic indexes (PGIs) for educational attainment (EA) and regress cognitively stimulating parenting behavior during early childhood on these PGIs. We apply Mendelian imputation to construct the missing parental genotype. This approach allows us to control for both parents' PGIs for EA and thereby achieve a natural experiment: Conditional on parental genotype, the offspring genotype is randomly assigned. In this way, we eliminate the possibility that child's genotype may be proxying unmeasured parent characteristics. Results differ by parenting behavior: (1) parents' singing to the child is not affected by the child's EA PGI, (2) parents play more with children with higher EA PGIs, and (3) non-college-educated parents read more to children with higher education PGIs, while college-educated parents respond less to children's EA PGI.
AB - A growing literature points to children's influence on parents' behavior, including parental investments in children. Further, previous research has shown differential parental response by socioeconomic status to children's birth weight, cognitive ability, and school outcomes-all early life predictors of later socioeconomic success. This study considers an even earlier, more exogenous predictor of parental investments: offspring genotype. Specifically, we analyze (1) whether children's genetic propensity toward educational success affects parenting during early childhood and (2) whether parenting in response to children's genetic propensity toward educational success is socially stratified. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Survey of Parents and Children (N = 6,247), we construct polygenic indexes (PGIs) for educational attainment (EA) and regress cognitively stimulating parenting behavior during early childhood on these PGIs. We apply Mendelian imputation to construct the missing parental genotype. This approach allows us to control for both parents' PGIs for EA and thereby achieve a natural experiment: Conditional on parental genotype, the offspring genotype is randomly assigned. In this way, we eliminate the possibility that child's genotype may be proxying unmeasured parent characteristics. Results differ by parenting behavior: (1) parents' singing to the child is not affected by the child's EA PGI, (2) parents play more with children with higher EA PGIs, and (3) non-college-educated parents read more to children with higher education PGIs, while college-educated parents respond less to children's EA PGI.
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U2 - 10.1093/sf/soac155
DO - 10.1093/sf/soac155
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85166420285
SN - 0037-7732
VL - 102
SP - 310
EP - 329
JO - Social Forces
JF - Social Forces
IS - 1
ER -