Within-family Mendelian randomization finds little evidence that mothers' or fathers' educational attainment causally affects children's depressive, anxiety, or ADHD traits at age 8¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2024 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? In within-family MR models controlling for the child's genotype, neither maternal nor paternal education showed evidence of an effect on children's depressive, anxiety, or ADHD traits, with wide confidence intervals. → Hughes 2024

Evidence¶

Hughes 2024¶

Hughes, A. M., Torvik, F. A., van Bergen, E., Hannigan, L. J., Corfield, E. C., Andreassen, O. A., Ystrom, E., Ask, H., Davey Smith, G., Davies, N. M. & Havdahl, A. (2024). Parental education and children’s depression, anxiety, and ADHD traits, a within-family study in MoBa. npj Science of Learning. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-024-00260-8

q2 · i? · causal · r2

Within-family MR analysis of 40,879 Norwegian mother-father-child trios (MoBa), instrumenting parental education with a polygenic index and adjusting for the child's own education PGI. For depressive traits, maternal estimate 0.00 (p = 0.94) and paternal −0.02 (p = 0.39), with "little evidence that either parent’s education affected their children’s outcomes". Anxiety and ADHD results were similarly null; the authors state effects larger than 0.08 S.D. per year are unlikely.

"In Mendelian randomization models which also controlled for the child’s genotype, there was little evidence that either parent’s education affected their children’s outcomes, although the con fidence intervals were wide (maternal: 0.00, CI = −0.04, 0.05, p = 0.94, paternal: −0.02, CI = −0.06, 0.02, p = 0.39)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Children's own polygenic index for educational attainment is negatively associated with their ADHD traits at age 8, independent of parental PGIs — related
• Children's own polygenic index for educational attainment is negatively associated with their depressive traits at age 8 — related
• In complete-case sensitivity analyses, maternal education showed unexpected positive associations with children's depressive and ADHD-inattention traits — reports the opposite
• Non-genetic models show small negative associations between parents' years of education and children's depressive traits, which attenuate once confounders are accounted for — reports the opposite
• Two-sample MR finds inverse-variance weighted estimates linking maternal education to fewer depressive but more ADHD-inattention traits, with other estimators consistent with the null — reports the opposite