Maternal age at childbirth and offspring disruptive behaviors: testing the causal hypothesis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Recent studies suggest that the association between maternal age at childbearing (MAC) and children's disruptive behaviors is the result of family factors that are confounded with both variables, rather than a casual effect of environmental factors specifically related to MAC. These studies, however, relied on restricted samples and did not use the strongest approach to test causal influences.

Methods

Using data on 9,171 4-9-year-old and 6,592 10-13-year-old offspring of women from a nationally representative sample of US households, we conducted sibling-comparison analyses. The analyses ruled out all genetic factors that could confound the association, as well as all environmental confounds that differ between unrelated nuclear families, providing a strong test o

SUBMITTER: D'Onofrio BM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2936232 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature