Genetic and environmental influences on global family conflict.

Abstract

This study examined genetic and environmental influences on global family conflict. The sample comprised 872 same-sex pairs of twin parents, their spouses/partners and one adolescent child per twin from the Twin and Offspring Study in Sweden (TOSS). The twins, spouses and child each reported on the degree of family conflict, and there was significant agreement among the family members’ ratings. These shared perspectives were explained by one common factor, indexing global family conflict. Genetic influences explained 36% of the variance in this common factor, suggesting that twins’ heritable characteristics contribute to family conflict, via genotype-environment correlation. Nonshared environmental effects explained the remaining 64% of this variance, indicating that twins’ unique childhood and/or current family experiences also play an important role.

Etiological Contributions to the Covariation Between Children’s Perceptions of Inter-Parental Conflict and Child Behavioral Problems

“…Such results are clearly consistent with recent work using a Children-of-Twins design (Harden et al, 2007; Schermerhorn et al, 2011) as well as past work pointing toward gene-environment correlation as a potential mechanism underlying the relationship between conflict and child adjustment problems (Feinberg et al, 2005; Horwitz et al, 2010; Neiderhiser et al, 1999). Furthermore, because the CPIC provides multiple dimensions of inter-parental conflict from the child’s perspective, specificity in these relationships could also be determined (e.g.., rGE involving threat and internalizing problems and rGE involving self-blame and externalizing problems).…”

“…By contrast, recent behavioral genetic studies have demonstrated that genetic influences at least partially mediate the association between inter-parental conflict and child behavior problems, suggesting potential gene-environment interplay (Feinberg, Reiss, Neiderhiser, & Hetherington, 2005; Harden et al, 2007; Horwitz et al, 2010; Neiderhiser et al, 1999). This interplay likely involves a combination of (1) gene-environment correlations, defined as non-random or genetically influenced exposure to particular environmental experiences, and (2) gene x environment interactions, defined as genetically-modulated individual differences in sensitivity to environmental risk factors.…”

The role of aggressive personality and family relationships in explaining family conflict.

“…Prior research using TOSS has indicated that genetic and nonshared environmental influences account for covariation between family relationships (Ganiban et al, 2007) and global family conflict (Horwitz et al, 2010). For these reasons, we hypothesized that both genetic and nonshared environmental influences on parents’ aggressive personality, marital quality, and negative parenting would be correlated with genetic and nonshared influences on global family conflict.…”

“…Because genetic information comes from the twins, genetic influences on other family members' reports on family conflict can be described as evidence of r GE. A more recent investigation revealed genetic contributions to the extent of agreement between twin, spouse, and child reports on the FES, suggesting the role of r GE in shaping family conflict (Horwitz et al, 2010). However, previous studies have not identified sources of genetic and environmental influences on global family conflict.…”

Genes-in-Dyads: A Study of Relationship Quality

“…A sparse literature on the heritability of individuals’ own relationship experiences offers a starting point. In a series of papers, Spotts and colleagues use twin designs to examine the heritability of various dimensions of marital quality, including satisfaction, conflict, and warmth (Horwitz et al, 2010; Spotts et al, 2004, 2006). Overall, they find modest genetic and substantial nonshared environmental influences.…”