Reiss, D., & Neiderhiser, J. M. (2011). Marital dynamics and child proaction: Genetics takes a second look at developmental theory. In K. A. Dodge & M. Rutter (Eds.), Duke series in child development and public policy. Gene–environment interactions in developmental psychopathology (pp. 105-120). New York, NY, US: Guilford Press.

The impact of genetics on our understanding of the family system makes the new genetic frontier of essential relevance to child clinicians. We have long passed the simple notion that genes account for some part of the development of psychopathology and environmental circumstances—such as parenting and the parental marriage—account for other parts. The new genetics requires us to rethink our concepts of the family and how it operates. To illustrate this new view, we consider two closely related themes in current work, marriage and the child’s proactive influences on the parent-child and marital relationships. Both themes concern how three subsystems in the family are linked: the marital relationship, the parental relationship, and the developmental mechanisms within the children of these parents. We review evidence that, by adolescence, developmental systems within the child not only evoke but sustain parent-child conflict across the span of many years. Thus, new evidence strongly weights a genetic frame for examining parent-child relationships.