Genetics of Perceived Family Interaction From 12 to 17 Years of Age

Abstract

We analyzed how the effects of genetic and environmental factors on the perceptions of family interaction change from early to late adolescence. The data were collected by postal surveys on Finnish twins (N = 4808) at 12, 14 and 17 years of age and analyzed using genetic twin modeling. Additive genetic factors explained a modest share of the variation in perceived relational support (a² = 0.30 in boys and 0.18 in girls) and relational tensions (a² = 0.13 and 0.14, respectively) at 12 years of age, with the proportions becoming larger through 17 years of age (a² = 0.53 in boys and 0.49 in girls for relational support; a² = 0.35 in boys and 0.33 in girls for relational tensions). Simultaneously, the role of environment shared by co-twins decreased. These findings suggest that the associations between perceived family interaction and other factors in adulthood should be interpreted with caution, because they partly reflect genetic background, whereas in childhood, they may provide more reliable information on parental characteristics.

Keywords: Adolescents; Family interaction; Genetics; Twins.

Fig. 1

Analytical models: a Univariate additive genetic (A), shared environment (C) and unique environment (E) model for relational tensions (RT₁ for first and RT₂ for second twin); b Bivariate Cholesky decomposition (presented for one twin only) of additive genetic correlation (r_A), shared environmental correlation (r_C) and unique environmental correlation (r_E) between RT and relational support (RS)