2007 — 2009 |
Emery, Robert E |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Genetically Informed Studies of Family Life: Effects On Adults and Children @ University of Virginia Charlottesville
[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Extensive research documents that family experience, particularly family structure, is a risk (or protective) factor for a range of adverse physical and mental health outcomes in children and parents. However, the extent to which - or whether - family life causes unwanted outcomes is open to question. Neither parents nor children experience family life at random; rather, individuals are "selected" into family experiences based on known (and unknown) characteristics. Selection into the major family experiences that are our focus - teen pregnancy, divorce, stable marriage, and religious participation - is known to occur at the demographic level. Selection also is likely to occur based on unmeasured background experiences and individual characteristics, including genetically mediated selection effects such personality (e.g., antisocial behavior) or physical characteristics (e.g., age at first menarche). Behavior genetic researchers call this the gene- environment correlation, and suggest that the confound renders existing social science research on family life uninterpretable. We take this concern seriously, and have conducted genetically-informed twin studies of divorce and children's adjustment, step-father presence and early menarche, harsh parenting and child well- being, and parental conflict and child adjustment. Twin studies allow for complete (in co-twin control designs) or partial (in children of twin designs) control for genetic selection. Twin studies also control for the shared environment, because twins share family experiences in addition to genetic background. Thus, twin studies afford control for genetic background, measured experience, and unmeasured shared experience. We propose to use the Australian Twin Registry, AddHealth, and the Virginia 30,000 to distinguish genetic and shared environmental selection effects from the likely causal effects of teen pregnancy, divorce, stable marriage, and religious participation on the emotional and physical well being of parents and children. Public Health Relevance: Family difficulties are linked with adverse physical and mental health outcomes in children and parents. Because family experience is not random, we do not know whether family troubles cause these problems. Twin studies uniquely control for genetic and shared environmental selection effects, thus refining distinctions between outcomes merely correlated with teen pregnancy, divorce, stable marriage, and religious participation from outcomes caused (or prevented) by these major family experiences. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]
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2011 — 2013 |
Emery, Robert E |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Twin Studies of the Marriage Benefit: Parsing Selection From Causation
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Family life is widely viewed as having a profound influence on both children and adults. However, broad changes in family structure have contributed to evolving, and controversial, ideas about what makes a normal or healthy family. Social scientists contribute both to basic knowledge about family life, and to social programs and political debates, by studying potential causes and consequences of different family experiences. These efforts are exceedingly important, especially given the prospect of altering family life in order to promote individual health and well-being. Our proposed work contributes to this important effort by focusing much of our effort on the question: Does marriage benefit social, emotional, psychological, and economic well-being - and even physical health and longevity? A large body of research suggests that marriage is correlated with these outcomes, but correlation does not mean causation. Or as two critics of marriage noted in a recent essay, To say marriage creates wealth is to confuse correlation with causation. If there is more wealth in Manhattan than in Brooklyn, that does not mean that moving to Manhattan will make you wealthier. We are not only concerned that background and personality affects who gets and stays married, but we also know that genetic factors influence the likelihood that people will experience happy marriage or other key aspects of family life. Even as we raise this concern, however, we offer a method - studying twins - that solves not one but two huge scientific problems. Identical twins share the same genes, and they also share the same upbringing. Thus, when we compare identical twins, we eliminate the problem of nonrandom selection into experience based on background, prior experience, personality, and genes. In fact, the twin method allows us to determine cause and effect better than any available research technique, other than randomly assigning couples to marry, or not, divorce, or not, and so on, which, of course, is logistically and ethically impossible. We propose to study five unique samples of twins in the U.S., Australia, and Sweden (each sample offers special benefits) to test whether marriage (and single life, cohabitation, divorce, widowhood, and remarriage) really are likely to cause of the outcomes with which they are correlated. We also propose to study how genes and the environment work together to modify the marriage benefit for mental and physical health, including studying specific genes recently documented to influence behavior in close relationships. Finally, in order to enrich our highly technical quantitative analyses, we plan to interview identical twins to learn more about what makes them different, particularly how different experiences in marriage, romantic relationships, and relationship dissolution may alter their life course.
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