The Cardiff-IVF sample has been used as a natural experimental design to examine the effects of parenting and parental psychopathology on child adjustment, and to examine the role of the prenatal environment. The results and prevention implications of two Cardiff IVF studies are described here. In the first study, the authors examined the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behavior and depression by comparing parent-child associations across genetically related versus genetically unrelated parent-child dyads and examining the mediating role of parental hostility to the child (Harold et al., 2011). For antisocial behavior, path analyses indicated direct associations between parent antisocial behavior and child antisocial behavior that were fully mediated by parent-to-child hostility for both genetically related and genetically unrelated groups. This pattern of results was consistent for mothers and fathers. The similar pattern of results for genetically related and unrelated dyads highlights the role of parent-to-child hostility as an environmental risk mechanism for the transmission of antisocial behavior. In comparison, for depression, path analyses indicated a direct association between parent depression and child depression for genetically related mothers and fathers that was
