How does it work? Some parents may have personalities that have them prioritizing the short-term over the long-term. Rather than investing in their offspring\u2019s educational outcome, by investing in a college fund, say, they may prefer spending the money on vacations to Europe, which have a great deal of short-term utility. The child may have somewhat different preferences, but this would be irrelevant, as these sorts of decisions are usually made by parents. The same is true in the converse situation, where parents make decisions that would increase the likelihood of their offspring going to college. This is a situation where the offspring may not have inherited the gene (or cluster of genes) that gives their parents the long-term vision, but they themselves benefit from that disposition.<\/p>\n This reality is missed out in classical studies, which look just at the correlation in characteristics between parents and offspring. Obviously parents and offspring can correlate in educational attainment due to factors unrelated to their genetic relationship, but the subtle aspect of genetic nurture is that the genetics of the parent strongly impact the non-genetic inputs into the outcome in the offspring. With modern genomics, we can actually look at which genetic copies are transmitted or not directly, rather than having to guess.<\/p>\n Arguably, given how educational attainment\u00a0shapes<\/a>\u00a0important economic and social outcomes, understanding the forces that drive and impede how educated people become is one of the more important tasks societies should undertake. The findings on genetic nurture underscore the powerful role genetics plays. Every human has two copies of a gene, and they contribute one of their two copies to their offspring. For genetic heritability, the trait varies as a function of the contributed copy; the other copy is irrelevant. For genetic nurture,\u00a0both copies matter, the transmitted and untransmitted! \u201cGenetic nurture effects,\u201d the researchers write, \u201cwere largely explained by observed parental education and socioeconomic status, pointing to their role in environmental pathways shaping child educational outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n In that sense, genetic effects, via genetic nurture, have a larger scope than some people might have thought. Robert Plomin, a King\u2019s College London behavioral geneticist, has\u00a0argued<\/a>, somewhat controversially, that the \u201cmost important thing that parents give to their children is their genes.\u201d If Plomin\u2019s right, the systematic review of genetic nurture\u2019s effects on educational attainment wouldn\u2019t detract from his point but make it in another way: Even the genes that parents don\u2019t give matter.<\/p>\n Razib Khan<\/a>\u00a0is a population geneticist. Follow him on Twitter\u00a0@razibkhan<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This article previously appeared on the GLP on September 25, 2023.<\/strong><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-PM-3.png\")
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