The developmental interface between nature and nurture: A mutual influence model of child antisocial behavior and parent behaviors.

TLDR

The study investigates how heritable traits in adopted children elicit responses from adoptive parents, creating reciprocal influences between parent and child behavior. An adoption design collected data from biological and adoptive parents of 45 adoptees aged 12–18, comparing those with biological parents having substance abuse or antisocial disorders to those without. Results showed that biological parents’ psychiatric disorders were linked to adoptees’ antisocial/hostile behaviors, which mediated a reciprocal association with adoptive parents’ behaviors, especially mothers’ parenting practices.

Abstract

Using an adoption design to collect data on biological and adoptive parents of children adopted at birth, this study explored a possible mechanism through which heritable characteristics of adopted children evoke adoptive parent responses and lead to reciprocal influences between adoptive parent and adopted child behavior. Participants were 25 male and 20 female adoptees, 12-18 years of age, having either a biological parent with substance abuse/dependency or antisocial personality or a biological parent with no such history. The study found that psychiatric disorders of biological parents were significantly related to children's antisocial/hostile behaviors and that biological parents' psychiatric disorders were associated with adoptive parents' behaviors. This genotype-environment association was largely mediated by adoptees' antisocial/hostile behaviors. Results also suggest that the adoptee's antisocial / hostile behavior and adoptive mother's parenting practices affect each other.