We also found that adolescent’ genetic predispositions for externalizing behavior were associated with parental knowledge, providing some evidence of evocative gene-environment correlation (Klahr and Burt 2014). This is consistent with prior literature indicating that children’s genetic predispositions contribute to parenting behaviors and could evoke, for example, less parental monitoring and less knowledge (Elam et al. 2017; Samek et al. 2014; Wertz et al. 2016). Higher genetic risk for externalizing was associated with lower parental knowledge, and this inverse relationship likely reflects lower levels of adolescent self-disclosure of their activities and whereabouts and perhaps poorer quality of parent-adolescent relationship (e.g., less enjoyable parent-child interactions, less parental involvement).
