Change in Parenting, Change in Student-Teacher Relationships, and Oxytocin Receptor Gene (OXTR): Testing a Gene-×-Environment (G×E) Hypothesis in Two Samples

Abstract

Prior research suggests that parenting affects children's relationships, including those with teachers, although there is variation across individuals in such effects. Given evidence suggesting that oxytocin may be particularly important for the quality of social relationships, we tested the hypotheses (a) that change in parenting from 4 to 6 years of age influences and predicts change in the student-teacher relationship from 6 to 8 years of age and (b) that this effect is moderated by a polymorphism related to the child's oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR), rs53576. In 2 studies, participants included, respectively, 652 socioeconomically diverse Norwegian children from a community sample (50.8% male; mean age of 54.9 months at first assessment) and 559 such children from 8 different U.S. locales (49.0% male; approximately 54 months at the first assessment). Norwegian results showed that change in parenting predicted change in student-teacher relationships, but only in the case of children homozygous for the A allele of rs53576 and in a manner consistent with differential-susceptibility theory: for AA carriers, when parenting changed for the worse, so did children's relationship with teachers, whereas when parenting changed for the better, the teacher-child relationships improved accordingly. Such G×E findings could not be replicated in the American sample. Results are discussed in terms of 2 contrasting models of Person-×-Environment interaction (differential susceptibility and diathesis stress) and potential reasons for failure to replicate. (PsycINFO Database Record

Full text

Change in Parenting, Change in Student–Teacher Relationships, and
Oxytocin Receptor Gene (OXTR): Testing a Gene-⫻-Environment (G⫻E)
Hypothesis in Two Samples
Beate Wold Hygen
Norwegian University of Science and Technology and NTNU
Social Research, Trondheim, Norway
Jay Belsky and Zhi Li
University of California, Davis
Frode Stenseng
Norwegian University of Science and Technology Ismail Cuneyt Güzey
Norwegian University of Science and Technology and St. Olav
University Hospital
Lars Wichstrøm
Norwegian University of Science and Technology and NTNU Social Research, Trondheim, Norway
Prior research suggests that parenting affects children’s relationships, including those with teachers,
although there is variation across individuals in such effects. Given evidence suggesting that oxytocin
may be particularly important for the quality of social relationships, we tested the hypotheses (a) that
change in parenting from 4 to 6 years of age influences and predicts change in the student–teacher
relationship from 6 to 8 years of age and (b) that this effect is moderated by a polymorphism related to
the child’s oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR), rs53576. In 2 studies, participants included, respectively, 652
socioeconomically diverse Norwegian children from a community sample (50.8% male; mean age of
54.9 months at first assessment) and 559 such children from 8 different U.S. locales (49.0% male;
approximately 54 months at the first assessment). Norwegian results showed that change in parenting
predicted change in student–teacher relationships, but only in the case of children homozygous for the
A allele of rs53576 and in a manner consistent with differential-susceptibility theory: for AA carriers,
when parenting changed for the worse, so did children’s relationship with teachers, whereas when
parenting changed for the better, the teacher–child relationships improved accordingly. Such G⫻E
findings could not be replicated in the American sample. Results are discussed in terms of 2 contrasting
models of Person-⫻-Environment interaction (differential susceptibility and diathesis stress) and poten-
tial reasons for failure to replicate.
Keywords: diathesis stress, differential susceptibility, OXTR rs53576, parenting, student–teacher
relationship
Evidence indicates that the quality of student–teacher relation-
ships has wide-ranging implications for children’s functioning and
development (Hamre & Pianta, 2001), including behavior prob-
lems (Silver, Measelle, Armstrong, & Essex, 2005), school en-
gagement and academic achievement (Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999;
Roorda, Koomen, Spilt, & Oort, 2011), peer relations (De Laet et
al., 2014), and social competence (Skalická et al., 2015). Such
findings underscore the importance of illuminating the determi-
nants of student–child-relationship quality. Available evidence
suggests that positive parent–child relations may lay the ground-
work for children’s positive relations with their teachers (Booth,
Kelly, Spieker, & Zuckerman, 2003;DeMulder, Denham,
Schmidt, & Mitchell, 2000); in the present study, we evaluated the
effects of parenting in two separate samples, one Norwegian
Editor’s Note. Marc Bornstein served as the action editor for this article. —JSE
This article was published Online First May 4, 2017.
Beate Wold Hygen, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University
of Science and Technology, and NTNU Social Research, Trondheim,
Norway; Jay Belsky and Zhi Li, Department of Human
Ecology, University of California, Davis; Frode Stenseng, Regional Centre
for Child and Youth Mental Health and Child Welfare, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology; Ismail Cuneyt Güzey, Department
of Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and
Department of Psychiatry, St. Olav University Hospital; Lars Wichstrøm,
Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Tech-
nology, and NTNU Social Research, Trondheim, Norway.
This research was funded by Grants 191144/V50 and 228685/H10 from
the Research Council of Norway.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Beate
Wold Hygen, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science
and Technology, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway. E-mail: beate.hygen@
samfunn.ntnu.no
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