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Parenting practices and intergenerationalassociations in cognitive abilityM Byford, 1 D Kuh 2 and M Richards 2 *1 Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London Medical School, London, UK, 2 MRC Unit for LifelongHealth and Ageing, London, UK*Corresponding author. MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Royal Free andUniversity College Medical School, 33 Bedford Place, London WC1B 5JU, UK. E-mail: m.richards@nshd.mrc.ac.ukAccepted 25 October 2011Background Cognitive ability is an important contributor to life chances, withimplications for cycles of advantage or disadvantage across gener-ations. Parenting practices are known to influence offspring cogni-tive development, but the extent to which these mediateintergenerational continuities and discontinuities in cognitive abilityhas not been adequately studied.Methods We used factor analysis to derive summary measures of parentingpractices, and regression analyses and path modelling to test asso-ciations between these and cognitive function at age 8 years in 1690first offspring of the British 1946 birth cohort. Analyses allowed fordirect and indirect effects of parental original and achieved socialcircumstances, educational attainment and own childhood cognitiveability. Additional covariates were provided by indicators of parentalphysical and mental health.Results Regression analyses revealed that three aspects of parenting, intel-lectual home environment, parental aspiration and cognitive stimu-lation, were positively and independently associated with offspringchildhood cognitive ability, whereas coercive discipline was nega-tively and independently associated. Path modelling was appropri-ate for intellectual environment, which also revealed direct andindirect effects of parental cognitive ability and educational andoccupational attainment on offspring cognitive ability.Conclusion Parenting practices, particularly provision of an intellectual envir-onment, were directly associated with offspring cognitive develop-ment. These data add to the relatively few studies that examineintergenerational continuity and discontinuity in cognitive ability.Keywords Parenting, cognition, intergenerational, birth cohortIntroductionThere is modest yet consistent evidence that a widerange of parenting practices are associated with off-spring cognitive development. Cohort studies indicatethat harsh discipline may hinder it, 1 whereas parentalinterest in education, 2 parenting quality, 3 maternalaffection, 4,5 nurturance 6 and cognitively stimulatingenvironments 4,5,7,8 benefit it. Children thus benefitedare also more likely, as parents themselves, to beencouraging of their own children’s education. 5 Thusparenting practices may play an important role in theThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association? The Author 2011; all rights reserved. Advance Access publication 29 November 2011International Journal of Epidemiology 2012;41:263–272doi:10.1093/ije/dyr188263