Abstract
Self-esteem is an attitude about the self that predicts psychopathology and general well-being. Parenting practices have been shown to be related to self-esteem, but these estimates are confounded because parents and children share genes. The aim of the present study was to use the monozygotic (MZ) twin difference design to isolate the non-shared environmental impact of remembered parenting on self-esteem. In a sample of 1328 adults (345 MZ twin pairs, 319 DZ twin pairs), retrospective reports of maternal and paternal affection were related to self-esteem, all of which were significantly heritable. Using MZ difference scores, paternal affection differences, but not maternal affection differences, were significantly related to self-esteem differences. These results suggest that parenting provided by the father directly impacts self-esteem through non-shared environmental mechanisms. Maternal affection, on the other hand, impacts self-esteem through shared genes (not shared environment, as shared environment was not a significant aspect of self-esteem). This has implications for parenting intervention programs.
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Notes
Twins comprising four twin pairs were interviewed at different ages. In such cases,twins’ ages were averaged in order to account for the age of both twins with a single value priorto use as covariates in the MZ twin difference analyses. All twins who provided data at differentages were tested within one year of each other.
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Acknowledgements
The 1995 phase of the study was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development. The 2005 phase was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (P01-AG020166) to conduct a longitudinal follow-up of the MIDUS (Midlife in the USA) investigation. The first author thanks her thesis committee members, Curtis S. Dunkel and Paige E. Goodwin.
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Riley L. Marshall, Colin R. Harbke, and Lisabeth Fisher DiLalla declare no conflicts of interest.
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Marshall, R.L., Harbke, C.R. & DiLalla, L.F. The Role of Remembered Parenting on Adult Self-Esteem: A Monozygotic Twin Difference Study. Behav Genet 51, 125–136 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-020-10034-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-020-10034-8