Internalizing behavior in adolescent girls affects parental emotional overinvolvement: a cross-lagged twin study.
The aim of this study was to examine the direction and the etiology of the association between different parenting styles (parental emotional overinvolvement [EOI] and parental criticism) and internalizing behavior from adolescence to early adulthood. A longitudinal genetically informative cross-lagged design was applied to a population-based sample of Swedish twins contacted at age 16-17 (n = 2369) and at age 19-20 (n = 1705). Sex-limitation modelling revealed different effects for boys and girls. For girls, genetic influences on internalizing problems at age 16-17 independently explained 2.7% of the heritability in parental EOI at age 19-20. These results suggest that emotionally overinvolved and self-sacrificing parental behavior stems in part from daughters (but not sons) genetic predisposition for internalizing behavior. These findings highlight the importance of genetically influenced child-driven effects underlying the parenting-internalizing association, and clarify that the role of such effects may differ depending on sex, type of parenting and developmental period.
Moberg
Therese
T
Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Therese.Moberg@ki.se
Lichtenstein
Paul
P
Forsman
Mats
M
Larsson
Henrik
H
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008957:Models, Genetic; D016487:Parenting; D010290:Parents; D012737:Sex Factors; D013548:Sweden