title: Internalizing behavior in adolescent girls affects parental emotional overinvolvement: a cross-lagged twin study.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Therese.Moberg@ki.se
authors.forename: Therese
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Moberg
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lichtenstein
authors.forename: Mats
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Forsman
authors.forename: Henrik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Larsson
mesh_terms: 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