Raising Issues
Child-Driven Parenting: Differential Early Childhood Investment by Offspring Genotype
Asta Breinholt & Dalton Conley
NBER Working Paper, December 2020
Abstract:
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 towards educational success affects parenting during early childhood; and (2) whether parenting in response to children's genetic propensity towards educational success is socially stratified. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Survey of Parents and Children (N=7,738), we construct polygenic scores for educational attainment and regress cognitively stimulating parenting behavior during early childhood on these polygenic scores. We use a range of modeling strategies to address the concern that child's genotype may be proxying unmeasured parent characteristics. Results show that parents provide more cognitive stimulation to children with higher education polygenic scores. This pattern varies by socioeconomic status with college-educated parents responding less to children's genetic propensity towards educational success than non-college-educated parents do.
Sibling Spillovers
Sandra Black et al.
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is notoriously difficult to identify peer effects within the family. Using administrative data on children from both Florida and Denmark, the paper examines the effects of having a disabled younger sibling. To address the identification challenge, the paper compares the differential effects for first- and second-born children in three-plus-child families, taking advantage of the fact that birth order influences the amount of time that a child spends in early childhood with their younger siblings, disabled or not. The paper finds evidence that, relative to the first born, the second child in a family is differentially affected when the third child is disabled.
Preferences, Partners, and Parenthood: Linking Early Fertility Desires, Marriage Timing, and Achieved Fertility
Natalie Nitsche & Sarah Hayford
Demography, December 2020, Pages 1975-2001
Abstract:
In the United States, underachieving fertility desires is more common among women with higher levels of education and those who delay first marriage beyond their mid-20s. However, the relationship between these patterns, and particularly the degree to which marriage postponement explains lower fertility among the highly educated, is not well understood. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort to analyze differences in parenthood and achieved parity for men and women, focusing on the role of marriage timing in achieving fertility goals over the life course. We expand on previous research by distinguishing between entry into parenthood and average parity among parents as pathways to underachieving, by considering variation in the impact of marriage timing by education and by stage of the life course, and by comparing results for men and women. We find that women with a bachelor's degree who desired three or more children are less likely to become mothers relative to women with the same desired family size who did not attend college. Conditional on becoming mothers, however, women with at least a bachelor's degree do not have lower completed family size. No comparable fatherhood difference by desired family size is present. Postponing marriage beyond age 30 is associated with lower proportions of parenthood but not with lower parity among parents. Age patterns are similar for women and men, pointing at social rather than biological factors driving the underachievement of fertility goals.
The Impact of Custodial Grandparenting on Cognitive Performance in a Longitudinal Sample of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
Ian McKay & Danielle Nadorff
Journal of Family Issues, forthcoming
Abstract:
There are currently 2.7 million grandparents raising grandchildren in the United States. As grandparent caregiving has become more prevalent, concerns have surfaced regarding the effect of additional caregiving responsibilities placed on an aging population. The following study uses an existing dataset of individuals who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. The present study examined the impact of grandparenting on measures of cognition, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Findings from the cross-sectional analysis show that custodial grandparents outperformed their noncustodial grandparent counterparts on the cognitive tests of word recall, category fluency, letter fluency, and cognitive similarities. Findings from the longitudinal analysis show that though custodial grandparents had initially performed worse on the digit ordering task, their scores declined at a much slower rate than non-custodial grandparents. By using a cross-sectional and longitudinal research design, this study provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of grandparenting on cognitive performance.
Methylation of the glucocorticoid receptor promoter in children: Links with parents as teachers, early life stress, and behavior problems
Elena Silvia Gardini et al.
Development and Psychopathology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study examined the effect of early life stress (ELS) on the glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1) methylation, the associations between NR3C1 methylation and behavior problems, and the effect of the program Parents as Teachers (PAT) on NR3C1 methylation. Participants included 132 children, 72 assigned to the PAT intervention group and 60 to the PAT control group. Children were aged 3 years, and were living in psychosocially at-risk families. We assessed NR3C1 methylation of the NGFI-A binding regions of exon 1F via sodium bisulfite sequencing from saliva DNA. Results indicated that (a) children living in families receiving PAT had decreased methylation at one single cytosine-guanine dinucleotides (CpG) site; (b) current maternal depressive symptoms and parental disagreement were predictive of increased methylation of mean NGFI-A and three single CpG sites; and (c) increased methylation of mean NGFI-A and one single CpG site was significantly associated with increased internalizing and externalizing symptoms. In addition, mean NGFI-A was a mediator of the association between parental disagreement and a child's affective problems. These results suggest that PAT may contribute to preventing NR3C1 methylation in preschool children living in psychosocially at-risk situations, and confirm previous findings on the associations between ELS, NR3C1 methylation, and behavior problems.