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Parental brain-derived neurotrophic factor genotype, child prosociality, and their interaction as predictors of parents' warmth.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Parental warmth has been associated with various child behaviors, from effortful control to callous-unemotional traits. Factors that have been shown to affect parental warmth include heritability and child behavior. However, there is limited knowledge about which specific genes are involved, how they interact with child behavior, how they affect differential parenting, and how they affect fathers. We examined what affects paternal and maternal warmth by focusing on the child's prosocial behavior and parents' genotype, specifically a Valine to Methionine substitution at codon 66 in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene. METHODS:Data was available from a sample of 6.5 year-old twins, consisting of 369 mothers and 663 children and 255 fathers and 458 children. Self-reports were used to assess mothers' and fathers' warmth. Child prosociality was assessed with the other-parent report and experimental assessments. RESULTS:Mothers' warmth was not affected by their BDNF genotype, neither as a main effect nor in an interaction with child prosociality. Fathers with the Met allele scored higher on warmth. Additionally, there was a significant interaction between fathers' BDNF genotype and child prosociality. For fathers with the Met allele there was a positive association between warmth and child prosociality. Conversely, for fathers with the Val/Val genotype there was no association between warmth and child prosociality. Results were repeated longitudinally in a subsample with data on age 8-9 years. A direct within family analysis showed that fathers with the Met allele were more likely than Val/Val carriers to exhibit differential parenting toward twins who differed in their prosocial behavior. The same pattern of findings was found with mother-rated and experimentally assessed prosociality. CONCLUSIONS:These results shed light on the genetic and environmental underpinnings of paternal behavior and differential parenting.

SUBMITTER: Avinun R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5434190 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Parental brain-derived neurotrophic factor genotype, child prosociality, and their interaction as predictors of parents' warmth.

Avinun Reut R Knafo-Noam Ariel A

Brain and behavior 20170404 5

<h4>Background</h4>Parental warmth has been associated with various child behaviors, from effortful control to callous-unemotional traits. Factors that have been shown to affect parental warmth include heritability and child behavior. However, there is limited knowledge about which specific genes are involved, how they interact with child behavior, how they affect differential parenting, and how they affect fathers. We examined what affects paternal and maternal warmth by focusing on the child's ...[more]

PMID: 28523227

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Project description:BackgroundGlobally, there is an increasing prevalence of excessive screen time exposure among young children, including in Malaysia. Parents are advised to limit this exposure, but there are barriers for many of them to follow this recommendation. To date, there is a lack of research on the factors that cause these parental barriers.ObjectiveThis study aimed to determine the parental barrier toward the reduction of excessive child screen time and its predictors among parents of children aged younger than 5 years in the Petaling District, Selangor, Malaysia.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted from April 2019 to June 2020 among 789 parent-child dyads attending child health clinics in the Petaling District. Validated self-administered questionnaires were used to capture information on sociodemographic, parental, child-related, and environmental factors and parental barriers. Stratified sampling with probability proportionate to size was employed. Data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics version 25 (IBM Corp). Descriptive analysis and bivariable analysis were performed before multiple linear regression was used to identify predictors of parental barriers.ResultsThe overall mean score of parental barriers was 3.51 (SD 0.83), indicating that the average numbers of barriers experienced by parents were more than 3. The multivariable analysis showed that the predictors of parental barriers included monthly household income (adjusted β=-.03, 95% CI -0.05 to -0.02), parents who worked in public sectors (adjusted β=.18, 95% CI 0.06 to 0.29), positive parental attitude on screens (adjusted β=.68, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.79), low parent self-efficacy to influence child's physical activity (adjusted β=-.32, 95% CI -0.43 to -0.20), and child screen time (adjusted β=.04, 95% CI 0.02 to 0.06).ConclusionsThe strongest predictor of parental barriers to reduce excessive child screen time was the positive parental attitude on screen time which could contribute to their abilities to limit child screen time. Thus, future intervention strategies should aim to foster correct parental attitudes toward screen time activities among young children.

Project description:Parental stress is related to child mental health problems, with numerous evidence indicating that it is an important predictor of parenting and parent-child relationship. New approaches to psychopathology could be particularly informative for clinical research, however, there is limited research that employs network analysis with parents. Network analysis could contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between child mental health problems and parental stress by highlighting the most central nodes and how the two constructs influence each other. The scope of the study was to identify potential new intervention targets to reduce the mental health problems of children and prevent contagion between parent stress and child psychopathology. Furthermore, we also sought to test whether the dynamic between parental stress and child psychopathology differs across the level of parent stress and child total difficulties. In this endeavor, we had three main directions. First, we estimated a network at the level of child mental health problems and identified the most central nodes. Second, we mapped the main paths through which parent stress and child mental health problems communicate with each other. Third, we investigated the network invariance across the level of parent stress (high vs moderate) and child mental health problems (low vs. high total difficulties). Participants (N = 1014) were parents of children with ages between four and 17 years old. The analyses were conducted in RStudio. Results indicated that perceived coping was a central node, bridging the two constructs. The global strength of the network was higher for parents who reported high levels of stress compared to those who reported only moderate levels of stress. In contrast, we found that the global strength of the network was lower for children with high levels of total difficulties compared to those with low levels of total difficulties. In conclusion, we argue the importance of focusing on the targeting nodes with high bridge centrality, such as perceived coping, for designing prevention and intervention programs. Future research should use temporal dynamics between parental stress and child mental health problems and explore mechanisms between the two constructs.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03520-1.

Dataset Information

Parental brain-derived neurotrophic factor genotype, child prosociality, and their interaction as predictors of parents' warmth.

Publications

Parental brain-derived neurotrophic factor genotype, child prosociality, and their interaction as predictors of parents' warmth.

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