Better, for worse, or both? Testing environmental sensitivity models with parenting at the level of individual families

Good parent-child relationship protects against alcohol use in maltreated adolescent females carrying the MAOA-uVNTR susceptibility allele

Introduction

Risk-allele carriers of a Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene, short-allele (MAOA-S) in males and long-allele (MAOA-L) in females, in the presence of a negative environment, are associated with alcohol misuse. Whether MAOA-S/L alleles also present susceptibility to a positive environment to mitigate the risk of alcohol misuse is unknown. Thus, we assessed the association of the three-way interaction of MAOA, maltreatment, and positive parent-child relationship with alcohol consumption among adolescents.

Methods

This prospective study included 1416 adolescents (females: 59.88%) aged 16 - 19 years from Sweden, enrolled in the "Survey of Adolescent Life in Västmanland" in 2012. Adolescents self-reported alcohol consumption, maltreatment by a family (FM) or non-family member (NFM), parent-child relationship, and left saliva for MAOA genotyping.

Results and discussion

We observed sex-dependent results. Females carrying MAOA-L with FM or NFM and a good parent-child relationship reported lower alcohol consumption than those with an average or poor parent-child relationship. In males, the interactions were not significant. Results suggest MAOA-L in females, conventionally regarded as a "risk", is a "plasticity" allele as it is differentially susceptible to negative and positive environments. Results highlight the importance of a good parent-child relationship in mitigating the risk of alcohol misuse in maltreated individuals carrying genetic risk. However, the interactions were not significant after adjusting to several environmental and behavioural covariates, especially parent's alcohol use, negative parent-child relationship, and nicotine use (smoking and/or snus), suggesting predictor and outcome intersection. Future studies and frameworks for preventive strategies should consider these covariates together with alcohol consumption. More studies with larger sample sizes are needed to replicate the findings.

Like No Other? A Family-Specific Network Approach to Parenting Adolescents

Numerous theories suggest that parents and adolescents influence each other in diverse ways; however, whether these influences differ between subgroups or are unique to each family remains uncertain. Therefore, this study explored whether data-driven subgroups of families emerged that exhibited a similar daily interplay between parenting and adolescent affective well-being. To do so, Subgrouping Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation (S-GIMME) was used to estimate family-specific dynamic network models, containing same- and next-day associations among five parenting practices (i.e., warmth, autonomy support, psychological control, strictness, monitoring) and adolescent positive and negative affect. These family-specific networks were estimated for 129 adolescents (Mage = 13.3, SDage = 1.2, 64% female, 87% Dutch), who reported each day on parenting and their affect for 100 consecutive days. The findings of S-GIMME did not identify data-driven subgroups sharing similar parenting-affect associations. Instead, each family displayed a unique pattern of temporal associations between the different practices and adolescent affect. Thus, the ways in which parenting practices were related to adolescents' affect in everyday life were family specific.

From cross-lagged effects to feedback effects: Further insights into the estimation and interpretation of bidirectional relations

Bidirectional relations have long been of interest in psychology and other social behavioral sciences. In recent years, the widespread use of intensive longitudinal data has provided new opportunities to examine dynamic bidirectional relations between variables. However, most previous studies have focused on the effect of one variable on the other (i.e., cross-lagged effects) rather than the overall effect representing the dynamic interplay between two variables (i.e., feedback effects), which we believe may be due to a lack of relevant methodological guidance. To quantify bidirectional relations as a whole, this study attempted to provide guidance for the estimation and interpretation of feedback effects based on dynamic structural equation models. First, we illustrated the estimation procedure for the average and person-specific feedback effects. Then, to facilitate the interpretation of feedback effects, we established an empirical benchmark by quantitatively synthesizing the results of relevant empirical studies. Finally, we used a set of empirical data to demonstrate how feedback effects can help (a) test theories based on bidirectional relations and (b) reveal correlates of individual differences in bidirectional relations. We also discussed the broad application prospects of feedback effects from a dynamic systems perspective. This study provides guidance for applied researchers interested in further examining feedback effects in bidirectional relations, and the shift from focusing on cross-lagged effects only to a comprehensive consideration of feedback effects may provide new insights into the study of bidirectional relations.

Adolescent-Mother Agreements and Discrepancies in Reports of Helicopter Parenting: Associations with Perceived Conflict and Support

Adolescents' and parents' similar and/or divergent perceptions of parental behaviors may be associated with youth-parent relationship quality. This study examined adolescents' and mothers' perceptions of helicopter parenting, and whether (dis)agreements between these views were associated with perceived conflict and support. Participants were 349 late adolescents (MT1age = 18.20; 39.8% male) and their mothers (MT1age = 49.10) in Hong Kong who completed four assessments over one year. Results suggested that youth-mother agreements regarding helicopter parenting were positively associated with both conflict and support. Additionally, discrepancies between their reports were positively related to adolescent-reported conflict. These findings highlight the importance of examining multiple perspectives when studying helicopter parenting dynamics, and suggest both positive and negative aspects of these practices in Chinese families.

The direction of effects between parenting and adolescent affective well-being in everyday life is family specific

Numerous theories and empirical studies have suggested that parents and their adolescent children reciprocally influence each other. As most studies have focused on group-level patterns, however, it remained unclear whether this was true for every family. To investigate potential heterogeneity in directionality, we applied a novel idiographic approach to examine the effects between parenting and adolescent well-being in each family separately. For 100 days, 159 Dutch adolescents (Mage = 13.31, 62% female) reported on affective well-being and four parenting dimensions. The family-specific effects of pre-registered ( https://osf.io/7n2jx/ ) dynamic structural equation models indeed revealed that a reciprocal day-to-day association between parenting and adolescent affective well-being was present only in some families, with the proportion of families displaying a reciprocal association varying across the four parenting dimensions (11-55%). In other families, either parenting predicted the adolescent's affective well-being (8-43%) or vice versa (10-27%), or no day-to-day associations were found (16-60%). Adolescents with higher trait levels of environmental sensitivity and neuroticism were more strongly affected by parenting. Thus, findings suggest that the ways in which parents and adolescents influence each other in everyday life are unique, stressing the need to move towards an idiographic parenting science.