Family Environment and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms and Antisocial Behavior: A Multivariate Genetic Analysis

Measures of family environment often show substantial differences between children in the same family and are thus nonshared environment candidates. A key question is whether differential environments are related to differential outcomes when genetic differences between children in the same family are controlled. Parent and child reports and observations of family interactions were used to assess familial negativity and adolescents' depressive symptoms and antisocial behavior in a genetically informative sample of 719 same-sex sibling pairs ranging from 10 to 18 years old. Analyses revealed that parental and sibling negativity is significantly related to adolescent adjustment through nonshared environmental processes, although genetic factors account for most of the association between parental negativity and adolescent adjustment.