A growing literature points to children’s influence on parents’ behavior, including parental investments in children. Further, previous research has shown differential parental response by socioeconomic status to children’s birth weight, cognitive ability, and school outcomes—all early life predictors of later socioeconomic success. This study considers an even earlier, more exogenous predictor of parental investments: offspring genotype. Specifically, we analyze (1) whether children’s genetic propensity toward educational success affects parenting during early childhood and (2) whether parenting in response to children’s genetic propensity toward educational success is socially stratified. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Survey of Parents and Children (N = 6,247), we construct polygenic indexes (PGIs) for educational attainment (EA) and regress cognitively stimulating parenting behavior during early childhood on these PGIs. We apply Mendelian imputation to construct the missing parental genotype. This approach allows us to control for both parents’ PGIs for EA and thereby achieve a natural experiment: Conditional on parental genotype, the offspring genotype is randomly assigned. In this way, we eliminate the possibility that child’s genotype may be proxying unmeasured parent characteristics. Results differ by parenting behavior: (1) parents’ singing to the child is not affected by the child’s EA PGI, (2) parents play more with children with higher EA PGIs, and (3) non-college-educated parents read more to children with higher education PGIs, while college-educated parents respond less to children’s EA PGI.

中文翻译：

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以儿童为导向的育儿：后代基因型的差异性早期儿童投资

越来越多的文献指出孩子对父母行为的影响，包括父母对孩子的投资。此外，先前的研究表明，父母对儿童出生体重、认知能力和学业成绩的不同社会经济地位反应不同——所有这些都是以后社会经济成功的早期预测因素。这项研究考虑了一个更早、更外生的父母投资预测因素：后代基因型。具体来说，我们分析了 (1) 儿童教育成功的遗传倾向是否影响幼儿期的养育，以及 (2) 对儿童教育成功的遗传倾向的养育是否存在社会分层。使用雅芳家长和儿童纵向调查 (N = 6,247) 的数据，我们构建了教育程度 (EA) 的多基因指数 (PGI)，并根据这些 PGI 回归了幼儿期的认知刺激育儿行为。我们应用孟德尔插补来构建缺失的亲本基因型。这种方法使我们能够控制 EA 的父母双方的 PGI，从而实现自然实验：以父母基因型为条件，随机分配后代基因型。通过这种方式，我们消除了孩子的基因型可能代表未测量的父母特征的可能性。结果因养育行为而异：(1) 父母对孩子唱歌不受孩子 EA PGI 的影响，(2) 父母与 EA PGI 较高的孩子一起玩得更多，以及 (3) 未受过大学教育的父母阅读更多具有高等教育 PGI 的儿童，而受过大学教育的父母对儿童的 EA PGI 反应较少。