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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Oct 9.
Published in final edited form as: Child Dev. 2019 Oct 27;91(5):1745–1761. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13329

Figure 1.

Figure 1

How do mothers’ and children’s education-associated genetics influence parenting and child attainment? Testing gene environment correlation, genetic confounding and genetic nurture.

The panels illustrate the three hypotheses tested in the present paper: gene-environment correlation (panel a); genetic confounding (panel b) and genetic nurture (panel c). Panel a: Gene-environment correlations would be indicated by a nonzero path coefficient a, from mothers’ education-associated genetics (i.e. the polygenic score) to the parenting they provide, and/or by a nonzero path coefficient b, from children’s education-associated genetics (i.e. the polygenic score) to the parenting they receive. Panel b: Genetic confounding would be indicated by a reduction of path coefficient d between parenting and child attainment, once child genetics are controlled for. Panel c: Genetic nurture would be indicated by a nonzero partial regression coefficient of mothers’ education-associated genetics in the prediction of child attainment jointly with children’s own genetics (this analysis controls for genetic transmission of genetics that affect child attainment, i.e. paths c*f). The product of path coefficients a*d represents the part of genetic nurture mediated by measured parenting, whereas path coefficient e represents any remaining direct effect of mothers genetics’ on child attainment not mediated by measured parenting. For the purposes of this paper, the path diagrams are assumed to be qualitatively correct; that is, the depicted paths are assumed to be the only ones present (although some may have zero coefficients). This assumption rules out, for example, confounding of parenting and child attainment that is not due to genetics, because such confounding is not the topic of study in this article. Note that “genetics” refers to genetic influences on educational attainment as captured by the education polygenic score, which accounts for only a portion of all genetic influences on attainment. “Mother genetics” and “Child genetics” relate to the same trait, i.e. the polygenic score and scoring weights are the same.