The Earliest Origins of Genetic Nurture: The Prenatal Environment Mediates the Association Between Maternal Genetics and Child Development

Abstract

Observed genetic associations with educational attainment may be due to direct or indirect genetic influences. Recent work highlights genetic nurture, the potential effect of parents' genetics on their child's educational outcomes via rearing environments. To date, few mediating childhood environments have been tested. We used a large sample of genotyped mother-child dyads (N = 2,077) to investigate whether genetic nurture occurs via the prenatal environment. We found that mothers with more education-related genes are generally healthier and more financially stable during pregnancy. Further, measured prenatal conditions explain up to one third of the associations between maternal genetics and children's academic and developmental outcomes at the ages of 4 to 7 years. By providing the first evidence of prenatal genetic nurture and showing that genetic nurture is detectable in early childhood, this study broadens our understanding of how parental genetics may influence children and illustrates the challenges of within-person interpretation of existing genetic associations.

Keywords: childhood development; genetics; prenatal.

Fig. 1.

Conceptual model linking maternal genetics with child achievement and development through both a direct pathway (left) and an indirect pathway (child environment; right). Our three primary research questions (RQs) are also shown.

Fig. 2.

Timeline of procedures for the Born in Bradford cohort.

Fig. 3.

Binned scatterplots showing the associations between the Born in Bradford’s mothers’ polygenic score (PGS) and their children’s developmental outcomes (left) and academic outcomes (right). Children’s developmental outcomes are indexed by scores on the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP), and their academic outcomes are indexed by scores on the Key Stage 1. Maternal polygenic score was residualized on child polygenic score, maternal age, and the first 10 principal components of individual genotype. Maternal polygenic score and both developmental outcomes were standardized within sample (M = 0, SD = 1). Each point represents roughly 25 mother–child pairs. The red line represents the best linear fit from a regression on the underlying, unbinned data.