Estimating the Roles of Genetic Risk, Perinatal Risk, and Marital Hostility on Early Childhood Adjustment: Medical Records and Self-Reports

Abstract

A wide variety of perinatal risk factors have been linked to later developmental outcomes in children. Much of this work has relied on either birth/medical records or mothers' self-reports collected after delivery, and there has been an ongoing debate about which strategy provides the most accurate and reliable data. This report uses a parent-offspring adoption design (N = 561 families) to (1) examine the correspondence between medical record data and self-report data, (2) examine how perinatal risk factors may influence child internalizing and externalizing behavior at age 4.5 years, and (3) explore interactions among genetic, perinatal risk, and rearing environment on child internalizing and externalizing behavior during early childhood. The agreement of self-reports and medical records data was relatively high (51-100 %), although there was some variation based on the construct. There were few main effects of perinatal risk on child outcomes; however, there were several 2- and 3-way interactions suggesting that the combined influences of genetic, perinatal, and rearing environmental risks are important, particularly for predicting whether children exhibit internalizing versus externalizing symptoms at age 4.5 years.

Keywords: Adoption; Behavior problems; Genetic; Marital hostility; Medical records; Perinatal; Self-report.

Figure 1. Marital hostility moderates the association of obstetric complications with symptom directionality at age 4.5 years

Lines represent +/− 1SD of the sample mean for genetic risk for substance use. Obstetric complications risk is associated with externalizing symptoms at very low levels of marital hostility (effect not seen at −1 SD).

Figure 2. Genetic risk for substance use moderates the association of obstetric complications with symptom directionality at age 4.5 years

Lines represent +/− 1SD of the sample mean for genetic risk for substance use. Obstetric complications risk is associated with externalizing symptoms at very low levels of genetic risk for substance use (effect not seen at −1 SD).

Figure 3. Genetic risk for substance use moderates the association of pregnancy complications with symptom directionality at age 4.5 years

Lines represent +/− 1SD of the sample mean for genetic risk for substance use. * p < .05.

Figure 4. Marital hostility moderates the association of labor/delivery complications with symptom directionality at age 4.5 years

Lines represent +/− 1SD of the sample mean for marital hostility. * p < .05.

Figure 5. Genetic risk for externalizing and marital hostility moderate the association of pregnancy complications with symptom directionality at age 4.5 years

Lines represent +/− 1SD of the sample mean for genetic risk for externalizing. Low and high marital hostility was categorized with a mean split. * p < .05.