Mothers' depression and educational attainment and their children's academic trajectories.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Augustine JM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5555847 | biostudies-other | 2010 Sep
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
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Project description:This study tested implications of new genetic discoveries for understanding the association between parental investment and children's educational attainment. A novel design matched genetic data from 860 British mothers and their children with home-visit measures of parenting: the E-Risk Study. Three findings emerged. First, both mothers' and children's education-associated genetics, summarized in a genome-wide polygenic score, were associated with parenting-a gene-environment correlation. Second, accounting for genetic influences slightly reduced associations between parenting and children's attainment-indicating some genetic confounding. Third, mothers' genetics were associated with children's attainment over and above children's own genetics, via cognitively stimulating parenting-an environmentally mediated effect. Findings imply that, when interpreting parents' effects on children, environmentalists must consider genetic transmission, but geneticists must also consider environmental transmission.
| S-EPMC7183873 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Education 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.We 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.In 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.The relationship between educational attainment and GWG is nuanced and nonlinear.
| S-EPMC4958525 | biostudies-literature
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.
| S-EPMC6462058 | biostudies-literature
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:BackgroundThe potential association between level of education and age-related cognitive decline remains an open question, partly because of a lack of studies including large subsamples with low education and follow-up intervals covering a substantial part of the adult lifespan.ObjectivesTo examine cognitive decline assessed by a comprehensive clinical test of intelligence over a 35-year period of follow-up from ages 50 to 85 and to analyze the effect of education on trajectories of cognitive decline, including the effects of selective attrition.MethodsA longitudinal cohort study with a 35-year follow-up of community dwelling members of the Glostrup 1914 cohort. The study sample comprised 697 men and women at the 50-year baseline assessment and additional participants recruited at later follow-ups. Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQs were assessed using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale at ages 50, 60, 70, 80, and 85. To be able to track cognitive changes between successive WAIS assessments, all IQs were based on the Danish 50-year norms. Information on school education was self-reported. The association between education and cognitive decline over time was examined in growth curve models. Selective attrition was investigated in subsamples of participants who dropped out at early or later follow-ups.ResultsThe trajectories for Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQ showed higher initial cognitive performance, but also revealed steeper decline among participants with a formal school exam compared to participants without a formal exam. Verbal IQ showed the largest difference in level between the two educational groups, whereas the interaction between education and age was stronger for Performance IQ than for Verbal IQ. In spite of the difference in trajectories, higher mean IQ was observed among participants with a formal school exam compared to those without across all ages, including the 85-year follow-up. Further analyses revealed that early dropout was associated with steeper decline, but that this effect was unrelated to education.ConclusionComprehensive cognitive assessment over a 35-year period suggests that higher education is associated with steeper decline in IQ, but also higher mean IQ at all follow-ups. These findings are unlikely to reflect regression towards the mean, other characteristics of the employed test battery or associations between educational level and study dropout.
| S-EPMC8328320 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundMaternal educational attainment has been associated with birth outcomes among adult mothers. However, limited research explores whether academic performance and educational aspiration influence birth outcomes among adolescent mothers.MethodsData from Waves I and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) were used. Adolescent girls whose first pregnancy occurred after Wave I, during their adolescence, and ended with a singleton live birth were included. Adolescents' grade point average (GPA), experience of ever skipping a grade and ever repeating a grade, and their aspiration to attend college were examined as predictors of birth outcomes (birthweight and gestational age; n = 763). Univariate statistics, bivariate analyses and multivariable models were run stratified on race using survey procedures.ResultsAmong Black adolescents, those who ever skipped a grade had higher offspring's birthweight. Among non-Black adolescents, ever skipping a grade and higher educational aspiration were associated with higher offspring's birthweight; ever skipping a grade was also associated with higher gestational age. GPA was not statistically significantly associated with either birth outcome. The addition of smoking during pregnancy and prenatal care visit into the multivariable models did not change these associations.ConclusionsSome indicators of higher academic performance and aspiration are associated with better birth outcomes among adolescents. Investing in improving educational opportunities may improve birth outcomes among teenage mothers.
| S-EPMC3897950 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundLow educational attainment in parents is associated with child psychopathology. It is not clear whether the associations are due to risk factors that family members share or due to effects of maternal or paternal education on the offspring. We investigate whether associations between maternal and paternal educational attainment and child symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, and academic problems are due to shared genetic factors, shared family environmental factors, or effects of the parental phenotype educational attainment itself.MethodsThis study is based on the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). The sample comprised 34,958 children (17,128 girls) in 28,372 extended-family units. We used data from related nuclear families linked by siblings in the parent generation. We applied a quasi-experimental extended children-of-twins design that included siblings in both generations and took account of nonrandom mating by including partners. Educational attainment was self-reported by mothers and fathers. Mothers reported children's symptoms of ADHD, symptoms of depression, and academic problems by questionnaire when the children were 8 years old.ResultsChildren of lowly educated parents scored higher on all outcomes and had an approximate doubling of the risk of high symptom levels. The association between maternal and paternal educational attainment and child symptoms of ADHD and academic problems persisted after controlling for shared genetic and family environmental factors. Phenotypic transmission to depression was weaker and in the best fitting model fully explained by genetic factors shared by the two generations.ConclusionsAssociations between educational attainment of mothers and fathers and child symptoms of ADHD and academic problems could not be ascribed to shared familial risk factors, whereas associations with symptoms of depression could. Parental education or resources and behaviors resulting from low education might be targets of interventions aimed at reducing symptoms of ADHD and academic problems.
| S-EPMC8607471 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We examine to what extent the effect of early-life conditions (health and socioeconomic status) on health in later life is mediated by educational attainment and life-course trajectories (fertility, partnership, employment).Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (N = 12,034), we apply, separately by gender, multichannel sequence analysis and cluster analysis to obtain groups of similar family and employment histories. The KHB method is used to disentangle direct and indirect effects of early-life conditions on health.Early-life-conditions indirectly impact on health in later life as result of their influence on education and family and employment trajectories. For example, between 22% and 42% of the effect of low parental socio-economic status at childhood on the three considered health outcomes at older age is explained by educational attainment for women. Even higher percentages are found for men (35% - 57%). On the contrary, the positive effect of poor health at childhood on poor health at older ages is not significantly mediated by education and life-course trajectories. Education captures most of the mediating effect of parental socio-economic status. More specifically, between 66% and 75% of the indirect effect of low parental socio-economic status at childhood on the three considered health outcomes at older age is explained by educational attainment for women. Again, higher percentages are found for men (86% - 93%). Early-life conditions, especially socioeconomic status, influence family and employment trajectories indirectly through their impact on education. We also find a persistent direct impact of early-life conditions on health at older ages.Our findings demonstrate that early-life experiences influence education and life-course trajectories and health in later life, suggesting that public investments in children are expected to produce long lasting effects on people's lives throughout the different phases of their life-course.
| S-EPMC5886483 | biostudies-other
Project description:We investigated the extent to which performance on standardized achievement tests, executive function (EF), and aggression in childhood and adolescence accounted for the relationship between a polygenic score for educational attainment (EA PGS) and years of education in a community sample of African Americans. Participants (N = 402; 49.9% female) were initially recruited for an elementary school-based prevention trial in a Mid-Atlantic city and followed into adulthood. In first and twelfth grade, participants completed math and reading standardized tests and teachers reported on participants' aggression and EF, specifically impulsivity and concentration problems. At age 20, participants reported on their years of education and post-secondary degrees attained and their genotype was assayed from blood or buccal swabs. An EA PGS was created using results from a large-scale GWAS on EA. A higher EA PGS was associated with higher education indirectly via adolescent achievement. No other mediating mechanisms were significant. Adolescent academic achievement is thus one mechanism through which polygenic propensity for EA influences post-secondary education among urban, African American youth.
| S-EPMC6942631 | biostudies-literature
Project description:IntroductionDepression represents a major public health concern for children and adolescents, and is thought to negatively impact subsequent educational attainment. However, the extent to which depression and educational attainment are directly associated, and whether other factors play a role, is uncertain. Therefore, we aim to systematically review the literature to provide an up-to-date estimate on the strength of this association, and to summarise potential mediators and moderators on the pathway between the two.Methods and analysisTo identify relevant studies, we will systematically search Embase, PsycINFO, PubMed, Education Resources Information Centre and British Education Index, manually search reference lists and contact experts in the field. Studies will be included if they investigate and report on the association between major depression diagnosis or depressive symptoms in children and adolescents aged 4-18 years (exposure) and later educational attainment (outcome). Two independent reviewers will screen titles, abstracts and full texts according to eligibility criteria, perform data extraction and assess study quality according to a modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. If sufficiently homogeneous studies are identified, summary effect estimates will be pooled in meta-analysis, with further tests for study heterogeneity, publication bias and the effects of moderators using meta-regression.Ethics and disseminationBecause this review will make use of already published data, ethical approval will not be sought. The review will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, presented at practitioner-facing conferences, and a lay summary will be written for non-scientific audiences such as parents, young people and teachers. The work will inform upcoming investigations on the association between child and adolescent mental health and educational attainment.Prospero registration numberCRD42019123068.
| S-EPMC6886932 | biostudies-literature