Parental depression is related to internalising as well as externalizing problems, including attention problems, in childhood. These behaviours are heritable, so this association may be due to the transmission of genes from parents to children. However, as parents also provide part of the environment to their children, it is difficult to disentangle the role of nature versus nature in the intergenerational transmission of these behaviours.

One way to investigate the extent to which parental environmental influences exert an effect on offspring behaviour is by looking at the impact of the parental genome. M-GCTA (maternal-effects genome-wide complex trait analysis) estimates the extent to which SNPs in the maternal or paternal genome contribute to variance in offspring behaviour.

Additionally, recent investigations have made use of polygenic scores constructed using non-transmitted DNA from parents to offspring to report associations between parenting and offspring behaviours traits. These studies show that the part of the parental genotype that children do not inherit nonetheless predicts childhood behavior, indicating an effect of genetic nurture. The methodology has not been applied to investigate parental influences on offspring behavioural problems thus far. The aim of this project is to use transmitted and non-transmitted polygenic scores to clarify parental genetic and genetically-mediated environmental influences on offspring internalizing, externalizing and attentional problems. Furthermore, we aim to investigate whether the genetic nurture effect on offspring internalizing, externalizing and attention problems is exacerbated in children of depressed parents.