Parental educational attainment and income did not fully mediate the social genetic effects on offspring educational attainment (at least for fathers in our sample), suggesting that other psychosocial factors and socioeconomic status indicators (e.g., parental occupation) may serve as additional mediating pathways. This is not surprising, given robust evidence that educational attainment is influenced by many factors beyond parental educational attainment and income (Nagoshi et al., 1993; Ou & Reynolds, 2008). Our results indicated that parental bonding, an important aspect of positive parenting behaviors, was not significantly associated with parental education polygenic score and thus did not mediate the association between parental education polygenic score and offspring educational attainment. However, maternal educational attainment was associated with higher maternal bonding, which in turn was associated with higher offspring educational attainment. Our results indicated that the indirect pathway: parental education polygenic score → 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
