Parents' educational attainment is one of the strongest predictors of children's cognitive development, which in turn exerts a pivotal influence on children's educational outcomes. However, no prior study has explored change and stability in the relative association of mothers' and fathers' education with children's intelligence (IQ) that may occur across generations. Here, we identified 5 population cohort studies with children born in 1946, 1958, 1970, 1994–1996, and 2000-2002 that were representative of the UK's population at their inception, and that assessed parents' educational attainment and children's IQ (total N in analyses = 48,175). Associations of mothers' and fathers' education with children's IQ ranged from r = 0.38 (CI 95% 0.36–0.41) to r = 0.19 (CI 95% 0.17–0.20) across generations. Fathers' education was more strongly related to children's IQ in the earlier cohorts but in later years, mothers' education emerged as more dominant. However, these differences in the strength of the associations were small and might be chance findings. Negative interactions between mothers' and fathers' education in the prediction of children's intelligence that may reflect compensatory effects were observed in all cohorts, but only reached significance before 1970. We conclude that parents' educational attainment has been continuously associated with children's intelligence across generations with medium to large effect sizes. While our results are based on analyses of large population cohort studies that span across six decades, the limitations of the data and study design warrant a cautious interpretation of our findings.

Preregistration & data: https://osf.io/ep3jz/

父母的受教育程度是儿童认知发展的最强预测因素之一，进而对儿童的教育成果产生举足轻重的影响。然而，之前没有研究探讨过母亲和父亲的教育与儿童智力 (IQ) 之间的相关关系可能会发生在几代人之间的变化和稳定性。在这里，我们确定了 5 项人口队列研究，儿童出生于 1946 年、1958 年、1970 年、1994-1996 年和 2000-2002 年，这些研究在他们成立之初就代表了英国人口，并评估了父母的教育程度和儿童的智商（总 N在分析中 = 48,175）。母亲和父亲的教育与儿童智商之间的关联范围从r  = 0.38 (CI 95% 0.36–0.41) 到r = 0.19 (CI 95% 0.17–0.20) 跨代。在早期的队列中，父亲的教育与儿童智商的相关性更强，但在后来的几年中，母亲的教育变得更加重要。然而，这些关联强度的差异很小，可能是偶然的发现。在所有队列中都观察到母亲和父亲的教育在预测儿童智力方面可能反映代偿效应的负相互作用，但仅在 1970 年之前达到显着水平。中到大的效应量。虽然我们的结果是基于对跨越 60 年的大型人群队列研究的分析，

预注册和数据： https ://osf.io/ep3jz/