Genetic and environmental explanations of juvenile violence in advantaged and disadvantaged environments

Neighborhood Disadvantage and Parenting: Behavioral Genetics Evidence of Child Effects

The criminological literature has a long tradition of emphasizing the socialization effects that parents have on children. By contrast, evidence from behavioral genetics research gives precedence to child effects on parental management techniques over parental effects on children's outcomes. Considering these diverging lines of scholarship and literature, the current study explores a novel hypothesis that child effects on parenting may be conditioned by the level of the disadvantage of the neighborhood in which the child's family resides. By using measures of perceived parenting as dependent variables, the researchers analyze data on 733 same-sex sibling pairs derived from the Add Health study by taking advantage of the DeFries-Fulker analytical technique. The results show that in adequate neighborhoods, between 43% and 55% of the variance in the measures of perceived parenting is due to genetic factors, whereas shared environmental effects are negligible. In disadvantaged neighborhoods, genetic effects are negligible, whereas shared environmental influences account for between 34% and 57% of the variance in perceived parenting. These results offer partial support for the contextualized gene-environment correlation, which provides initial evidence that although both parental socialization effects and child effects exist, these effects can be modified by the context.

Mothers as a resource in times of stress: interactive contributions of socialization of coping and stress to youth psychopathology

This study examined the hypothesis that maternal socialization of coping would make a differential contribution to youth depression and externalizing psychopathology depending on youths' level of exposure to life stress. A sample of 155 youth (M age = 12.41, SD = 1.21) and their maternal caregivers completed semi-structured interviews and questionnaires in a two-wave longitudinal study over a 1-year period. Results provided evidence for two types of socialization x stress interactions-an amplification-effects model and a differential-effects model. In the context of interpersonal stress, findings supported an amplification-effects model wherein the risk and protective effects of engagement and disengagement socialization of coping emerged in youth exposed to high but not mild levels of stress. In the context of noninterpersonal stress, findings supported a differential-effects model wherein disengagement socialization of coping contributed to heightened risk among youth exposed to high stress but dampened risk among youth exposed to mild stress. This research identifies maternal socialization of coping as a noteworthy contributor to risk for youth psychopathology, and highlights the need to consider parenting x environment interactions when investigating parenting processes related to youth psychopathology.

Do the predictors of child conduct problems vary by high- and low-levels of socioeconomic and neighborhood risk?

This review seeks to examine whether the existing literature on child conduct problems (CP) supports the notion that certain CP risk factors vary in their importance across disadvantaged and better-off environments. Disadvantaged environments are represented by socioeconomic and/or neighborhood risk (SN risk) in this review. Three types of studies were reviewed: behavioral genetic studies that compare the importance of genetic and environmental influences on CP for youth from poor homes and/or disadvantaged communities versus youth from better-off contexts, studies that examine how SN risk and other CP risk factors interact, and studies that compare the antecedents for CP across levels of SN risk. Findings were inconsistent about the manner in which individual child risk factors interact with SN risk. However, familial risk factors were generally found to be of greater importance for youth from poor families and disadvantaged communities, particularly parental supervision. Most of the studies that indicated otherwise focused on physical discipline, or were limited to children from disadvantaged and extremely deprived environments. The findings suggest that in extremely deprived environments, familial influences are overwhelmed by the pervasiveness of other CP risk factors such as deviant peers. Implications for intervention and suggestions for future research are discussed.