Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-zzw9c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-27T21:24:49.647Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why does perceived parenting in adolescence predict maladaptive personality in adulthood? Evidence for substantial genetic mediation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2024

Kelsey A. Hobbs Open the ORCID record for Kelsey A. Hobbs [Opens in a new window] ,
Sylia Wilson Open the ORCID record for Sylia Wilson [Opens in a new window] ,
Scott I. Vrieze ,
Glenn I. Roisman ,
Matt McGue  and
Robert F. Krueger
Kelsey A. Hobbs*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
Sylia Wilson
Affiliation:
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Scott I. Vrieze
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Glenn I. Roisman
Affiliation:
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Matt McGue
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Robert F. Krueger
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
*
Corresponding author: Kelsey A. Hobbs; Email: hobbs145@umn.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Why is parenting in adolescence predictive of maladaptive personality in adulthood? This study sets out to investigate environmental and genetic factors underlying the association between parenting and maladaptive personality longitudinally in a large sample of twins. The present study addressed this question via a longitudinal study focused on two cohorts of twins assessed on aspects of perceived parenting (parent- and adolescent-reported) at age 14 years (n =1,094 pairs). Participants were followed to adulthood, and maladaptive personality traits were self-reported using the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) at age 24 or 34 years. We then modeled these data using a bivariate biometric model, decomposing parenting-maladaptive personality associations into additive genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental factors. Numerous domains of adolescent-reported parenting predicted adult maladaptive personality. Further, we found evidence for substantial additive genetic (ra ranging from 0.22 to 0.55) and (to a lesser extent) nonshared environmental factors (re ranging from 0.10 to 0.15) that accounted for the association between perceived parenting reported in adolescence and adult personality. Perceived parenting in adolescence and maladaptive personality in adulthood may be related due to some of the same genetic factors contributing to both phenotypes at different developmental periods.

Keywords

Geneticsmaladaptive personalityparentingpersonality disorders

Information

Type
Regular Article
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , August 2025 , pp. 1505 - 1514
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.).Google Scholar
Battle, C. L., Shea, M. T., Johnson, D. M., Yen, S., Zlotnick, C., Zanarini, M. C., Sanislow, C. A., Skodol, A. E., Gunderson, J. G., Grilo, C. M., McGlashan, T. H., & Morey, L. C. (2004). Childhood maltreatment associated with adult personality disorders: findings from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study. Journal of Personality Disorders, 18(2), 193–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornovalova, M. A., Cummings, J. R., Hunt, E., Blazei, R., Malone, S., & Iacono, W. G. (2014). Understanding the relative contributions of direct environmental effects and passive genotype-environment correlations in the association between familial risk factors and child disruptive behavior disorders. Psychological medicine, 44(4), 831–844. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291713001086 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carr, S., & Francis, A. (2009). Childhood maltreatment and adult personality disorder symptoms in a non-clinical sample. Australian Psychologist, 44(3), 146–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, P., Chen, H., Gordon, K., Johnson, J., Brook, J., & Kasen, S. (2008). Socioeconomic background and the developmental course of schizotypal and borderline personality disorder symptoms. Development and Psychopathology, 20(2), 633–650.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, P., Crawford, T. N., Johnson, J. G., & Kasen, S. (2005). The children in the community study of developmental course of personality disorder. Journal of personality disorders, 19(5), 466–486.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crawford, T. N., Cohen, P. R., Chen, H., Anglin, D. M., & Ehrensaft, M. (2009). Early maternal separation and the trajectory of borderline personality disorder symptoms. Development and psychopathology, 21(3), 1013–1030. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579409000546 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elam, K. K., Harold, G. T., Neiderhiser, J. M., Reiss, D., Shaw, D. S., Natsuaki, M. N., Gaysina, D., Barrett, D., & Leve, L. D. (2014). Adoptive parent hostility and children’s peer behavior problems: examining the role of genetically informed child attributes on adoptive parent behavior. Developmental psychology, 50(5), 1543–1552. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035470 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elkins, I. J., McGue, M., & Iacono, W. G. (1997). Genetic and environmental influences on parent-son relationships: Evidence for increasing genetic influence during adolescence. Developmental psychology, 33(2), 351–363.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fatimah, H., Wiernik, B. M., Gorey, C., McGue, M., Iacono, W. G., & Bornovalova, M. A. (2020). Familial factors and the risk of borderline personality pathology: genetic and environmental transmission. Psychological medicine, 50(8), 1327–1337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fossati, A., Krueger, R., Markon, K., Borroni, S., & Maffei, C. (2013). Reliability and validity of the personality inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5). Assessment (Odessa, Fla.), 20(6), 689–708.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fowler, J. C., Patriquin, M. A., Madan, A., Allen, J. G., Frueh, B. C., & Oldham, J. M. (2017). Incremental validity of the PID-5 in relation to the five factor model and traditional polythetic personality criteria of the DSM-5. International journal of methods in psychiatric research, 26(2), e1526. 10.1002/mpr.1526 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gore, W. L., & Widiger, T. A. (2013). The DSM-5 dimensional trait model and five-factor models of general personality. Journal of abnormal psychology, 122(3), 816–821. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032822 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Head, S. B., Baker, J. D., & Williamson, D. A. (1991). Family environment characteristics and dependent personality disorder. Journal of Personality Disorders, 5(3), 256–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, J., Cohen, P., Kasen, S., Smailes, E., & Brook, J. (2002). Maladaptive parenting and the association between parental and offspring psychiatric disorders. Zeitschrift Für Psychosomatische Medizin Und Psychotherapie, 48(4), 396–410.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, J. G., Cohen, P., Chen, H., Kasen, S., & Brook, J. S. (2006). Parenting behaviors associated with risk for offspring personality disorder during adulthood. Archives of general psychiatry, 63(5), 579–558.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, J. G., Cohen, P., Kasen, S., Smailes, E., & Brook, J. S. (2001). Association of maladaptive parental behavior with psychiatric disorder among parents and their offspring. Archives of general psychiatry, 58(5), 453–460.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, J., Liu, L., & Cohen, P. (2011). Parenting behaviours associated with the development of adaptive and maladaptive offspring personality traits. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 56(8), 447–456.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klahr, A. M., & Burt, S. A. (2014). Elucidating the etiology of individual differences in parenting: A meta-analysis of behavioral genetic research. Psychological bulletin, 140(2), 544–586.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krueger, R. F., Derringer, J., Markon, K. E., Watson, D., & Skodol, A. E. (2012). Initial construction of a maladaptive personality trait model and inventory for DSM-5. Psychological medicine, 42(9), 1879–1890.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krueger, R. F., & Hobbs, K. A. (2020). An overview of the DSM-5 alternative model of personality disorders. Psychopathology, 53(3-4), 126–132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lipscomb, S. T., Laurent, H., Neiderhiser, J. M., Shaw, D. S., Natsuaki, M. N., Reiss, D., & Leve, L. D. (2014). Genetic vulnerability interacts with parenting and early care education to predict increasing externalizing behavior. International journal of behavioral development, 38(1), 70–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025413508708 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Livesley, W. J., & Jang, K. L. (2008). The behavioral genetics of personality disorder. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 4(1), 247–274.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loehlin, J. C. (1996). The cholesky approach: A cautionary note. Behavior Genetics, 26(1), 65–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02361160 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons-Ruth, K., Bureau, J.-F., Holmes, B., Easterbrooks, A., & Brooks, N. H. (2013). Borderline symptoms and suicidality/self-injury in late adolescence: Prospectively observed relationship correlates in infancy and childhood. Psychiatry Research, 206(2), 273–281.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maccoby, E. E., Snow, M. E., & Jacklin, C. N. (1984). Children’s dispositions and mother-child interactions at 12 and 18 months: A short-term longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 20(3), 459–472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGue, M., & Bouchard, T. J. Jr (1984). Adjustment of twin data for the effects of age and sex. Behavior genetics, 14(4), 325–343.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McGue, M., Elkins, I., Walden, B., & Iacono, W. G. (2005). Perceptions of the parent-adolescent relationship: a longitudinal investigation. Developmental psychology, 41(6), 971–984.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moore, G., & Neiderhiser, J. (2014). Behavioral genetic approaches and family theory. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 6(1), 18–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neale, M. C., Hunter, M. D., Pritikin, J. N., Zahery, M., Brick, T. R., Kirkpatrick, R. M., Estabrook, R., Bates, T. C., Maes, H. H., & Boker, S. M. (2016). OpenMx 2.0: Extended structural equation and statistical modeling. Psychometrika, 81(2), 535–549. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-014-9435-8 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nivison, M. D., Vandell, D. L., Booth-LaForce, C., & Roisman, G. I. (2021). Convergent and discriminant validity of retrospective assessments of the quality of childhood parenting: Prospective evidence from infancy to age 26 years. Psychological science, 32(5), 721–734. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620975775 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Patterson, G. R., DeBaryshe, B., & Ramsey, E. (1989). A developmental perspective on antisocial behavior. American Psychologist, 44(2), 329–335. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.44.2.329 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reed, G. M. (2018). Progress in developing a classification of personality disorders for ICD-11. World Psychiatry, 17(2), 227–228.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reich, D. B., & Zanarini, M. C. (2001). Developmental aspects of borderline personality disorder. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 9(6), 294–301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reich, J. (1986). The relationship between early life events and DSM III personality disorders. Hillside Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 8(2), 164–73.Google ScholarPubMed
Reinelt, E., Stopsack, M., Aldinger, M., Ulrich, I., Grabe, H., & Barnow, S. (2014). Longitudinal transmission pathways of borderline personality disorder symptoms: From mother to child? Psychopathology, 47(1), 10–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roisman, G. I., & Fraley, R. C. (2006). The limits of genetic influence: A behavior-genetic analysis of infant-caregiver relationship quality and temperament. Child Development, 77(6), 1656–1667.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roisman, G. I., & Fraley, R. C. (2012). A behavior-genetic study of the legacy of early caregiving experiences: Academic skills, social competence, and externalizing behavior in kindergarten. Child Development, 83(2), 728–742.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rojas, S. L., & Widiger, T. A. (2017). Coverage of the DSM-IV-TR/DSM-5 Section II personality disorders with the DSM-5 dimensional trait model. Journal of Personality Disorders, 31(4), 462–482.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Skodol, A. E., Morey, L. C., Bender, D. S., & Oldham, J. M. (2015). The alternative DSM-5 model for personality disorders: A clinical application. American Journal of Psychiatry, 172(7), 606–613.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
South, S. C., Krueger, R. F., Knudsen, G. P., Ystrom, E., Czajkowski, N., Aggen, S. H., Neale, M. C., Gillespie, N. A., Kendler, K. S., & Reichborn-Kjennerud, T. (2017). A population based twin study of DSM-5 maladaptive personality domains. Personality disorders: Theory. Research, and Treatment, 8(4), 366–375, https://doi-org.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/10.1037/per0000220 Google Scholar
South, S., & DeYoung, N. (2013). Behavior genetics of personality disorders: Informing classification and conceptualization in DSM-5. Personality Disorders, 4(3), 270–283.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Steele, K. R., Townsend, M. L., & Grenyer, B. F. (2019). Parenting and personality disorder: An overview and meta-synthesis of systematic reviews. PloS one, 14(10), e0223038.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stover, C. S., Zhou, Y., Kiselica, A., Leve, L. D., Neiderhiser, J. M., Shaw, D. S., Natsuaki, M. N., Scaramella, L. V., & Reiss, D. (2016). Marital hostility, hostile parenting, and child aggression: Associations from toddlerhood to school age. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 55(3), 235–242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2015.12.008 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tein, J. Y., Roosa, M. W., & Michaels, M. (1994). Agreement between parent and child reports on parental behaviors. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 56(2), 341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tyrer, P., Mulder, R., Kim, Y., & Crawford, M. J. (2019). The development of the ICD-11 classification of personality disorders: An amalgam of science, pragmatism, and politics. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 15(1), 481–502.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Webster-Stratton, C., & Eyberg, S. M. (1982). Child temperament: Relationship with child behavior problems and parent-child interactions. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 11(2), 123–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, S., Haroian, K., Iacono, W. G., Krueger, R. F., Lee, J. J., Luciana, M., Malone, S. M., McGue, M., Roisman, G. I., & Vrieze, S. (2019). Minnesota center for twin and family research. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 22(6), 746–752.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wright, Z. E., Pahlen, S., & Krueger, R. F. (2017). Genetic and environmental influences on diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders-(DSM-5) maladaptive personality traits and their connections with normative personality traits. Journal of abnormal psychology, 126(4), 416–428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xu, J., & Zheng, Y. (2023). Parent- and child-driven daily family stress processes between daily stress, parental warmth, and adolescent adjustment. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 52(3), 490–505. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01691-5 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zanarini, M. C., Ruser, T. F., Frankenburg, F. R., & Hennen, J. (2000). Gunderson JG.Risk factors associated with the dissociative experiences of borderline patients. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 188(1), 26–30. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-200001000-00005 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhang, J., Buchanan, G. J. R., Piehler, T. F., Gunlicks-Stoessel, M., & Bloomquist, M. L. (2022). The relationship between parent-adolescent conflict dynamics and adolescent depression. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 31(9), 2535–2544. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-022-02318-w CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Hobbs et al. supplementary material

Hobbs et al. supplementary material
Download Hobbs et al. supplementary material(File)
File 33 KB