Findings

Raising Questions

Kevin Lewis

January 15, 2023

A genetically informed Registered Report on adverse childhood experiences and mental health
Jessie Baldwin et al.
Nature Human Behaviour, forthcoming 

Abstract:

Children who experience adversities have an elevated risk of mental health problems. However, the extent to which adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) cause mental health problems remains unclear, as previous associations may partly reflect genetic confounding. In this Registered Report, we used DNA from 11,407 children from the United Kingdom and the United States to investigate gene-environment correlations and genetic confounding of the associations between ACEs and mental health. Regarding gene-environment correlations, children with higher polygenic scores for mental health problems had a small increase in odds of ACEs. Regarding genetic confounding, elevated risk of mental health problems in children exposed to ACEs was at least partially due to pre-existing genetic risk. However, some ACEs (such as childhood maltreatment and parental mental illness) remained associated with mental health problems independent of genetic confounding. These findings suggest that interventions addressing heritable psychiatric vulnerabilities in children exposed to ACEs may help reduce their risk of mental health problems.


Maternal genetic risk for depression and child human capital
Giorgia Menta et al.
Journal of Health Economics, January 2023 

Abstract:

We here address the causal relationship between the maternal genetic risk for depression and child human capital using UK birth-cohort data. We find that an increase of one standard deviation (SD) in the maternal polygenic risk score for depression reduces their children's cognitive and non-cognitive skill scores by 5 to 7% of a SD throughout adolescence. Our results are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests addressing, among others, concerns about pleiotropy and dynastic effects. Our Gelbach decomposition analysis suggests that the strongest mediator is genetic nurture (through maternal depression itself), with genetic inheritance playing only a marginal role.


The Push for Racial Equity in Child Welfare: Can Blind Removals Reduce Disproportionality?
Jason Baron, Ezra Goldstein & Joseph Ryan
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming 

Abstract:

We conduct the first quantitative analysis of “blind removals,” an increasingly popular reform that seeks to reduce the over-representation of Black children in foster care by eliminating biases in the removal decisions of investigators. We first show that over-representation in most foster care systems is driven by Black children being substantially more likely than White children to be investigated for maltreatment to begin with. Conditional on initial rates of investigation, investigators remove White and Black children similarly. Second, we find no evidence that blind removals impacted the already small racial disparities in the removal decision, but they substantially increased time to removal.


Parental background and daughters’ and sons’ educational outcomes -- application of the Trivers-Willard hypothesis
Janne Salminen & Hannu Lehti
Journal of Biosocial Science, forthcoming 

Abstract:

This study uses Trivers-Willard hypothesis to explain the differences in daughters’ and sons’ educational outcomes by parental background. According to the Trivers-Willard hypothesis (TWH), parental support and investments for sons and daughters display an asymmetrical relationship according to parental status because of the different reproductive advantage of the sexes. It predicts that high-status parents support sons more than daughters, and low-status parents support daughters more than sons. In modern societies, where education is the most important mediator of status, the TW hypothesis predicts that sons from high-status families will achieve higher educational outcomes than daughters. Using cohorts born between 1987 and 1997 from the reliable full population Finnish register data that contain the data of over 600.000 individuals, children’s educational outcomes were measured using data on school dropout rate, academic grade point average (GPA), and general secondary enrollment in their adolescence. OLS and sibling fixed-effect regression that permitted an examination of opposite-sex siblings’ educational outcomes within the same family were applied. Sons with high family income and parental education, compared to daughters of the same family, have lower probability of dropping out of school and are more likely to enroll into academic secondary school track. In families with low parental education or income daughters have lower probability for school dropout and enroll more likely to academic school track related to sons of the same family. The effect of family background by sex can be interpreted to support TWH in dropout and academic school track enrollment but not in GPA.


Parent–adult child estrangement in the United States by gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality
Rin Reczek, Lawrence Stacey & Mieke Beth Thomeer
Journal of Marriage and Family, forthcoming 

Methods: We estimate logistic regression models using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and accompanying Child and Young Adult supplement to determine estimates of estrangement (and subsequent unestrangement) from mothers (N = 8495) and fathers (N = 8119) by children's gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. We then estimate hazards of first estrangement from mothers (N = 7919) and fathers (N = 6410), adjusting for adult child's and parents' social and economic characteristics.

Results: Six percent of respondents report a period of estrangement from mothers, with an average age of first maternal estrangement of 26 years old; 26% of respondents report estrangement from fathers, with an average age of first paternal estrangement of 23 years old. Results further show heterogeneity by gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality; for example, daughters are less likely to be estranged from their mothers than are sons, Black adult children are less likely than White adult children to be estranged from their mothers but more likely to be estranged from fathers, and gay, lesbian, and bisexual adult children are more likely than heterosexuals to be estranged from fathers. The majority of estranged adult children become unestranged from mothers (81%) and fathers (69%) in subsequent waves.


Trends in the Parenthood Gap in Health and Well-Being among U.S. Women from 1996 to 2018
Kei Nomaguchi & Melissa Milkie
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, January 2023

Abstract:

The notion that U.S. mothers with minor children are less happy and more depressed than nonmothers largely relies on data collected in the 1990s or earlier. Although the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic brought much attention to the stressfulness of parenting, we lack knowledge of how mothers fared relative to nonmothers in the 2000s and 2010s, before the pandemic. The authors investigate trends in the parenthood gap in happiness, depression, and self-rated health among women aged 18 to 59 years, using the 1996 to 2018 General Social Survey (n = 13,254) and the 1997 to 2018 National Health Interview Survey (n = 263,110). Results indicate that twenty-first-century mothers with younger children were better off than nonmothers on two measures, reporting less depression and better health. Mothers’ “depression advantage” grew across this time. However, mothers with older children reported less happiness than nonmothers, a continued trend from the 1990s. The study underscores the importance of examining various well-being indicators across the changing contexts of parenting.


Development of the Paternal Brain in Humans throughout Pregnancy
Françoise Diaz-Rojas et al.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, forthcoming 

Abstract:

Previous studies have demonstrated that paternal caregiving behaviors are reliant on neural pathways similar to those supporting maternal care. Interestingly, a greater variability exists in parental phenotypes in men than in women among individuals and mammalian species. However, less is known about when or how such variability emerges in human men. We investigated the longitudinal changes in the neural, hormonal, and psychological bases of expression of paternal caregiving in humans throughout pregnancy and the first 4 months of the postnatal period. We measured oxytocin and testosterone, paternity-related psychological traits, and neural-response-to-infant interaction videos using fMRI in first-time fathers and childless men at three time points (early to mid-pregnancy, late pregnancy, and postnatal). We found that paternal-specific brain activity in prefrontal areas distinctly develops during middle-to-late pregnancy and is enhanced in the postnatal period. In addition, among fathers, the timing of the development of prefrontal brain activity was associated with specific parenting phenotypes.


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