Objective: To use a prospective adoption study to stringently test for the intergenerational transmission of general psychopathology using disorder diagnoses from birth mothers, internalizing and externalizing problems in their adopted children, and reports of overreactive parenting by adoptive mothers.
Methods: This study used a prospective adoption design with 561 yoked family units including birth mothers, their adopted children, and adoptive mothers. Structural equation modeling was used to extract a general psychopathology factor from birth mother disorder diagnoses. This factor was then associated with child behavior problems and moderation by adoptive mother overreactive parenting was subsequently tested using ordinary least squares regression.
Results: Birth mother general psychopathology and adoptive mother overreactive parenting were significantly
positively associated with both child internalizing and externalizing problems. For child externalizing, adoptive mother overreactive parenting moderated the genetic risk conferred by general psychopathology from birth mothers.
Conclusions: Findings provide preliminary evidence for the genetic transmission of general psychopathology by linking birth mother disorder diagnoses to their adopted child’s behavior problems. The moderation of the positive association between general psychopathology and child externalizing by adoptive mother overreactive parenting highlights the importance of parenting when children are at low genetic risk. Implications for the study of comorbidity and child behavior problems are discussed.