Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Behav Genet. 2024 Jan;54(1):137-149. doi: 10.1007/s10519-023-10150-1. Epub 2023 Aug 29.
Parenting behaviors are among the most robust predictors of youth resilience to adversity. Critically, however, very few studies examining these effects have been genetically-informed, and none have considered parenting as an etiologic moderator of resilience. What's more, despite the multidimensionality of resilience, extant etiologic literature has largely focused on a single domain. The current study sought to fill these respective gaps in the literature by examining whether and how parental nurturance shapes the etiology of academic, social, and psychological resilience, respectively. We employed a unique sample of twins (N = 426 pairs; ages 6-11) exposed to moderate-to-severe levels of environmental adversity (i.e., family poverty, neighborhood poverty, community violence) from the Twin Study of Behavioral and Emotional Development in Children. As expected, parental nurturance was positively correlated with all forms of resilience. Extended univariate genotype-by-environment interaction models revealed that parental nurturance significantly moderated genetic influences on all three domains of resilience (academic resilience A= -0.53, psychological resilience A= -1.22, social resilience A= -0.63; all p < .05), such that as parental nurturance increased, genetic influences on youth resilience decreased. Put another way, children experiencing high levels of parental nurturance were more resilient to disadvantage, regardless of their genetic predisposition towards resilience. In the absence of nurturing parenting, however, genetic influences played an outsized role in the origins of resilience. Such findings indicate that parental nurturance may serve as a malleable protective factor that increases youth resilience regardless of genetic influences.
养育行为是预测青少年逆境适应力的最有力因素之一。然而,批判性地说,很少有研究从遗传学角度来检验这些影响,也没有研究将养育行为作为适应力的病因学调节因素来考虑。更重要的是,尽管适应力具有多维性,但现有病因学文献主要集中在单一领域。本研究试图通过分别检验父母养育对学术、社会和心理适应力的病因学的影响,填补文献中的这些空白。我们使用了儿童行为和情感发展双胞胎研究中的一个独特的双胞胎样本(N=426 对;年龄 6-11 岁),这些双胞胎暴露在中度到高度的环境逆境中(即家庭贫困、邻里贫困、社区暴力)。正如预期的那样,父母养育与所有形式的适应力呈正相关。扩展的单变量基因型-环境交互作用模型显示,父母养育显著调节了遗传对所有三个适应力领域的影响(学术适应力 A=-0.53,心理适应力 A=-1.22,社会适应力 A=-0.63;所有 p 值均<0.05),即随着父母养育的增加,遗传对青少年适应力的影响就会减少。换句话说,即使在遗传上容易出现适应力问题的情况下,体验到高水平父母养育的孩子也会更能适应不利环境。然而,在缺乏养育的情况下,遗传因素在适应力的起源中起着更大的作用。这些发现表明,父母养育可能是一种可塑的保护因素,可以提高青少年的适应力,而不受遗传影响。