Intergenerational influences of the cognitive and non-cognitive components of parental education on externalising and internalising difficulties in childhood and adolescence.

This study examines how the cognitive and non-cognitive components of parental education influence two dimensions of offspring mental health difficulties (externalising and internalising). We used data from 3,228 mother-father-child trios from the UK-based Millennium Cohort Study to decompose parental genetic influences into genetic transmission and genetic nurture routes (i.e., parental genetics influencing offspring via environmental pathways). For externalising, we uncover striking developmental patterns: genetic transmission increases from early childhood (3 years) to adolescence (14 years) for both cognitive and noncognitive components; conversely, genetic nurture effects decrease over time. For internalising, effects remain consistent across development. For both early externalising and internalising, the intergenerational transmission of the cognitive component mainly happens via genetic transmission whereas noncognitive effects mainly occur via genetic nurture. These results suggest that the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment involves component-specific and developmentally sensitive genetic and environmental pathways, with implications for developmentally informed intervention strategies.