We did not find evidence for potential environmental mediation of genetic nurture effects for adolescent externalizing behavior through the other parenting characteristics studied here (parental involvement, parent-child communication, parent-child closeness, parental knowledge). This was partly driven by the fact that there was generally no association between parental externalizing polygenic scores and the parenting variables examined (with the exception of parent-child closeness). The lack of association between parental genotype and parenting could partly reflect that our parenting measures were adolescent-report data. Thus, our measures of the parenting/parent-child relationship tapped adolescent perceptions of parenting, which may explain why they were more strongly correlated with the child’s own genotype. Moreover, prior evidence that parenting mediates the indirect genetic effects on child behavior comes measures of parenting earlier in development (Armstrong-Carter et al., 2020; Wertz et al., 2020). It is possible that genetic nurture processes via parenting might be more salient at earlier stages of development. Identifying other psychosocial factors and processes that may serve as the mediating pathways of indirect genetic risk is clearly needed.
