→ parental educational attainment → parental bonding → offspring educational attainment was statistically significant for mothers but not for fathers; thus, maternal bonding plays an important role in the pathway of social genetic effects. Although paternal bonding was associated with higher offspring educational attainment, it was not significantly associated with paternal educational attainment and income, and thus did not mediate the association between paternal education polygenic score, paternal educational attainment, and offspring educational attainment. It is possible that father’s parenting is more influenced by their own mental health such as alcohol and drug problems (Su et al., 2018) rather than their socioeconomic status. We note that our sample size for the analysis involving a measure of parenting was relatively small, and thus this study might be underpowered in detecting the association between parental education polygenic score and parenting behaviors.
