Interactions between serotonin transporter gene haplotypes and quality of mothers' parenting predict the development of children's noncompliance.

Abstract

The LPR and STin2 polymorphisms of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) were combined into haplotypes that, together with quality of maternal parenting, were used to predict initial levels and linear change in children’s (N = 138) noncompliance and aggression from age 18 –54 months. Quality of mothers’ parenting behavior was observed when children were 18 months old, and nonparental caregivers’ reports of noncompliance and aggression were collected annually from 18 to 54 months of age. Quality of early parenting was negatively related to the slope of noncompliance only for children with the LPR-S/STin2-10 haplotype and to 18-month noncompliance only for children with haplotypes that did not include LPR-S. The findings support the notion that SLC6A4 haplotypes index differential susceptibility to variability in parenting quality, with certain haplotypes showing greater reactivity to both supportive and unsupportive environments. These different genetic backgrounds likely reflect an evolutionary response to variation in the parenting environment.

Differential susceptibility experiments: Going beyond correlational evidence: Comment on beyond mental health, differential susceptibility articles.

“…Although in the current case, child SLC6A4 was unrelated to parenting (rendering evocative rGE unlikely), an unmeasured common genotype underlying noncompliance might increase the chance of negative parenting as well as the level of child noncompliance without any direct causal effect of parenting on child behavior. The same limitations are inherent in our own correlational studies of various parameters of differential susceptibility (e.g., BakermansKranenburg & Van IJzendoorn, 2006) and in the other studies reported in this issue (Eisenberg et al, 2012;Gibbons et al, 2012).…”

“…The study by Sulik et al (2012) is a case in point. They studied the interaction of genetic polymorphisms of the serotonin transporter (SLC6A4 or 5-HTTLPR) gene with quality of early maternal parenting in the prediction of noncompliance and aggression at 18 months and changes from 18 to 54 months.…”

Serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) genotype moderates the longitudinal impact of early caregiving on externalizing behavior

“…However, racial and developmental differences regarding which allele functions as the susceptibility allele have also been suggested (Davies & Cicchetti, 2013; Sulik et al, 2012). As such analyses within specific developmental time periods, well-defined racial groups, and with carefully characterized environmental differences, are needed to disentangle these interactions (van IJzendoorn, et al, 2011).…”

Candidate and non-candidate genes in behavior genetics

“…The second development is the increasing diversity of phenotypes that are being tested: these include quality of maternal parenting [26], affective state during marriage [27], risky sexual behavior [28], childhood emotionality [29], job satisfaction [30], perceived racial discrimination [31], adult unresolved attachment [32], and gaze bias [33]. A common feature of all these studies is the relatively small sample size: all except one [30] use samples of less than a thousand, and sometimes less than one hundred subjects [32].…”