Using DNA From Mothers and Children to Study Parental Investment in Children's Educational Attainment.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Wertz J
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7183873 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:In this study, we take a dynamic approach to studying the connections among mothers' education, their depression, and their children's academic trajectories during elementary school. Applying latent growth curve modeling to longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,012), we find that maternal depression does not mediate the association between mothers' education and children's achievement. Instead, maternal education moderates the association between maternal depression and children's achievement. Specifically, maternal depression only predicted lower achievement for children of women who did not pursue higher education. These results highlight the role of mothers' mental health in the intergenerational linkage between mothers' and children's educational experiences.
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Project description:Children whose parents divorce tend to have worse educational outcomes than children whose parents stay married. However, not all children respond identically to their parents divorcing. We focus on how the impact of parental divorce on children's education varies by how likely or unlikely divorce was for those parents. We find a significant negative effect of parental divorce on educational attainment, particularly college attendance and completion, among children whose parents were unlikely to divorce. Families expecting marital stability, unprepared for disruption, may experience considerable adjustment difficulties when divorce occurs, leading to negative outcomes for children. By contrast, we find no effect of parental divorce among children whose parents were likely to divorce. Children of high-risk marriages, who face many social disadvantages over childhood irrespective of parental marital status, may anticipate or otherwise accommodate to the dissolution of their parents' marriage. Our results suggest that family disruption does not uniformly disrupt children's attainment.
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Project description:Mechanisms explaining the negative effects of parental divorce on children's attainment have long been conjectured and assessed. Yet few studies of parental divorce have carefully attended to the assumptions and methods necessary to estimate causal mediation effects. Applying a causal framework to linked U.S. panel data, we assess the degree to which parental divorce limits children's education among whites and nonwhites and whether observed lower levels of educational attainment are explained by postdivorce family conditions and children's skills. Our analyses yield three key findings. First, the negative effect of divorce on educational attainment, particularly college, is substantial for white children; by contrast, divorce does not lower the educational attainment of nonwhite children. Second, declines in family income explain as much as one- to two-thirds of the negative effect of parental divorce on white children's education. Family instability also helps explain the effect, particularly when divorce occurs in early childhood. Children's psychosocial skills explain about one-fifth of the effect, whereas children's cognitive skills play a minimal role. Third, among nonwhites, the minimal total effect on education is explained by the offsetting influence of postdivorce declines in family income and stability alongside increases in children's psychosocial and cognitive skills.
| S-EPMC6559749 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Higher parental educational attainment is associated with higher offspring educational attainment. In this study, we incorporated genotypic and phenotypic information from fathers, mothers, and offspring to disentangle the genetic and socioenvironmental pathways underlying this association. Data were drawn from a sample of individuals of European ancestry from the collaborative study on the genetics of alcoholism (n = 4,089; 51% female). Results from path analysis indicated that paternal and maternal educational attainment genome-wide polygenic scores were associated with offspring educational attainment, above and beyond the effect of offspring education polygenic score. Parental educational attainment, income, and parenting behaviors served as important socioenvironmental pathways that mediated the effect of parental education polygenic score on offspring educational attainment. Our study highlights the importance of using genetically informed family studies to disentangle the genetic and socioenvironmental pathways underlying parental influences on human development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
| S-EPMC9733825 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundEducation is an important social determinant of many health outcomes, but the relationship between educational attainment and the amount of weight gained over the course of a woman's pregnancy (gestational weight gain [GWG]) has not been established clearly.MethodsWe used data from 1979 through 2010 for women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979) cohort (n = 6,344 pregnancies from 2,769 women). We used generalized estimating equations to estimate the association between educational attainment and GWG adequacy (as defined by 2009 Institute of Medicine guidelines), controlling for diverse social factors from across the life course (e.g., income, wealth, educational aspirations and expectations) and considering effect measure modification by race/ethnicity and prepregnancy overweight status.ResultsIn most cases, women with more education had increased odds of gaining a recommended amount of gestational weight, independent of educational aspirations and educational expectations and relatively robust to sensitivity analyses. This trend manifested itself in a few different ways. Those with less education had higher odds of inadequate GWG than those with more education. Among those who were not overweight before pregnancy, those with less education had higher odds of excessive GWG than college graduates. Among women who were White, those with less than a high school degree had higher odds of excessive GWG than those with more education.ConclusionThe relationship between educational attainment and GWG is nuanced and nonlinear.
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Project description:Educational attainment is a key behavioural measure in studies of cognitive and physical health, and socioeconomic status. We measured DNA methylation at 410,746 CpGs (N?=?4152) and identified 58 CpGs associated with educational attainment at loci characterized by pleiotropic functions shared with neuronal, immune and developmental processes. Associations overlapped with those for smoking behaviour, but remained after accounting for smoking at many CpGs: Effect sizes were on average 28% smaller and genome-wide significant at 11 CpGs after adjusting for smoking and were 62% smaller in never smokers. We examined sources and biological implications of education-related methylation differences, demonstrating correlations with maternal prenatal folate, smoking and air pollution signatures, and associations with gene expression in cis, dynamic methylation in foetal brain, and correlations between blood and brain. Our findings show that the methylome of lower-educated people resembles that of smokers beyond effects of their own smoking behaviour and shows traces of various other exposures.
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Project description:BACKGROUND:Parental educational attainment is protective against chronic medical conditions (CMCs). According to the minorities' diminished returns (MDRs) theory, however, the health effects of socioeconomic status (SES) indicators are smaller for socially marginalized groups such as racial and ethnic minorities rather than Whites. AIMS:To explore racial and ethnic differences in the effect of parental educational attainment on CMCs in a nationally representative sample of American youth. METHODS:In this cross-sectional study, we used baseline data of 10,701 12-17 years old youth in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH; 2013). Parental educational attainment was the independent variable. The dependent variable was the number of CMCs in youth. Age, gender, and family structure were covariates. Race and ethnicity were the focal moderators. Linear and multinomial regression were applied to analyze the data. RESULTS:Overall, higher parental educational attainment was associated with a lower number of CMCs. Race and ethnicity, however, showed significant interactions with parental educational attainment on a number of CMCs as well as 2+ CMCs, suggesting that the effect of parenting educational attainment on CMCs is significantly smaller for Black and Hispanic than White youth. CONCLUSIONS:In the United States, race and ethnicity alter the health gains that are expected to follow parental educational attainment. While White youth who are from highly educated families are most healthy, Black and Hispanic youth from highly educated families remain at higher risk for CMCs. That means, while the most socially privileged group, Whites, gain the most health from their parental education, Blacks and Hispanics, the least privileged groups, gain the least. The result is a disproportionately high number of CMCs in middle-class Blacks and Hispanics. Economic, social, public, and health policy makers should be aware that health disparities are not all due to lower SES of the disadvantaged group but also diminished returns of SES resources for them. Youth physical health disparities due to race and ethnicity exist across all SES levels.
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Project description:Sense of control is greater among children who grow up in households of higher socioeconomic status. It is unclear if this childhood advantage persists throughout life or if schooling and adulthood experiences override any early childhood advantage. Using data from 2 nationally representative samples of primarily middle-aged (National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, or MIDUS), and older adults (Health and Retirement Study, or HRS), I tested if personal mastery and perceived constraints in adulthood were associated with the educational attainment of the participant's father or mother, adjusting for participant's education level, income, and other demographic characteristics. In both samples, personal mastery was not associated with either parent's education level, but perceived constraints had a graded inverse association with mother's education level. These results indicate that childhood experiences continue to be associated with perceived constraints, even in later life, and may not be completely overridden by adult experiences.
| S-EPMC3532955 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectivesIntergenerational models of adult health contend that children's educational attainments influence the health and well-being of their parents. However, it is unclear how much of this association is confounded by background characteristics that predict both children's educational attainments and parents' subsequent health, particularly in the United States.MethodsData from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health Parent Study are used to examine how having no children who completed college influences parents' self-rated health and depressive symptoms. We rely on propensity score methods to more squarely assess this relationship net of potential confounding bias and to test for heterogeneity in the consequences associated with having no children who completed college.ResultsHaving no children who completed college is negatively associated with parents' self-rated health and positively associated with depressive symptoms. After statistically balancing differences in background characteristics between groups, these associations remain, though the magnitude of the coefficients is attenuated. Supplemental matching analyses suggest that while the association between children's education and self-rated health might be spurious, the association with depressive symptoms is more robust. Additionally, among parents with the highest propensity for having no children who complete college, the consequences on depressive symptoms are greatest.DiscussionThis study pays particular attention to selection-related concerns surrounding the association between offspring educational attainment and parent well-being in the United States. These findings are important given the call for investments in children's educational opportunities as promoting both the well-being of adult children and their parents.
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Project description:A robust body of literature spanning several countries indicates a positive association between maternal employment and child body mass index (BMI). Fewer studies have examined the role of paternal employment. More importantly, little empirical work examines the mechanisms that might explain the relationships between parental employment and children's BMI. Our paper tests the relationship between the cumulative experience of maternal and spouse employment over a child's lifetime and that child's BMI, overweight, and obesity at age 13 or 14. We further examine several mechanisms that may explain these associations. We use data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) merged mother-child file on cohorts of children who were born during a period of dramatic increase in both childhood obesity and maternal employment. We find that the number of hours that highly-educated mothers work over her child's lifetime is positively and statistically significantly associated with her child's BMI and risk of overweight at ages 13 or 14. The work hours of mothers' spouses and partners, on the other hand, are not significantly associated with these outcomes. Results suggest that, for children of highly-educated mothers, the association between maternal work hours and child BMI is partially mediated by television viewing time.
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