| Decades of research has indicated the foundational importance of parenting to offspring outcomes during childhood and beyond. Unearthing the specific origins of parenting is thus a critically important research objective in its own right. Extant research on this topic has suggested that parenting behaviors are multi-determined (Belsky, 1984) and are associated with a wide range of contextual and familial characteristics (e.g., ethnicity, community, family financial stress), as well as characteristics of the parents (e.g., personality) and their children (e.g., temperament). Behavioral genetic studies have further indicated that parenting behaviors are in fact heritable---that is, individual differences in parenting behavior are at least partially a function of genetic differences between persons. Critically, however, the estimates of these genetic influences have varied wildly across studies. It is also unclear how factors such as parent gender, child age, and methodological considerations may impact genetic influences on parenting behavior. The current studies aimed to 1) quantitatively synthesize twin and adoption studies (n = 51) examining the etiology of parenting behavior, with the goal of more definitely cataloging genetic and environmental effects on parenting and 2) examine a series of genetic variants that may contribute to the heritability of parenting, using a sample of 1,000 twin children aged 6-10 (the largest examination of candidate genes and parenting to date). Meta-analytic results revealed significant effects of parental genetic makeup on parental behavior, but also highlighted the genetic make-up of the child as a particularly prominent source of genetic transmission (via evocative gene-environment correlation). Environmental contributions to parenting also emerged as important. Molecular genetic analyses revealed significant effects of mothers' oxytocin receptor genotype (OXTR rs53576) on warmth. Several additional variants were approaching significance for mothers and fathers. The implications of these findings are discussed. |
