No evidence of parental mental health influencing children’s academic achievement: a within-family study

BackgroundChildren of parents with psychopathology generally do less well in school than their peers. Parental symptoms might however not account for their lower achievement, as other familial factors might contribute. MethodsTo examine the role of parental symptoms, we analyse data from up to 9,000 families of the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Study (MoBa). Parents filled out surveys on their symptoms of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, ADHD, and alcohol use disorder. Children in 5th Grade (aged 10) participated in nationally-standardised tests of mathematics, reading comprehension, and English (as an additional language). Comparing children who are cousins, we control for unmeasured factors shared among family members (e.g. genetics and socioeconomic status) that confound the relationship between parental mental health and children’s academic achievement. ResultsSimple regressions, not controlling for familial confounding, showed that children tend to score slightly lower on maths and reading if their parents had more symptoms of anxiety, depression, ADHD or eating disorder (-.060 ≤ βs ≤ -.013). However, these associations were attenuated and no longer in within-family analyses. Although unsignificant, associations of parental symptoms measured close to the child’s academic test are less attenuated than parental symptoms measured during pregnancy. ConclusionOur findings suggest that familial confounding partly explains the association of parental psychopathology and children’s academic achievement. Of note, differences between the Norwegian population, participants in the entire MoBA sample, and in the family subsample may limit the generalizability of this finding. Overall, our findings suggest that parental mental health does not have a causal or clinically meaningful impact on children’s achievement. Our study highlights the value of within-family designs to understand the causes and consequences of psychopathology.Key points and relevance: -Ten-year-olds of parents with more psychopathology symptoms tend to have slightly lower national test scores in mathematics and reading. -This association seems to principally be due to familial confounding, as this association disappears in a within-family design. -However, these within-family associations might be underestimated due to ascertainment bias in the cohort. -Parental symptoms experienced close in time to the child’s academic test may matter more than parental symptoms during pregnancy