Contrary to general perception that aggression or depression lies in one’s genes, a new study has found that the traits may be linked to parenting at home.

The nature vs. nuture debate continues with this recent study which found that parent’s attitude affect a child’s brain in his early stages of development. Positive and negative parenting practices are related to children’s mental health problems.

“This finding has significant implications for all parents – including those who are not genetically related to their children such as adoptive parents and genetically unrelated parents of IVF children.

Rather than blame children‘s behaviour solely on the genes passed on from a biological parent to a child, look at the environments that children live in to understand better why some children develop behavioural problems while other children do not,” team leader Professor Gordon Harold said.

The crew of researchers led by Gordon Harold, the Head of Otago’s Centre for Research on Child and Families studied the behavior of parents and children bearing relationship naturally through genes and those born through in-vitro fertilization.  The survey was conducted on parents of 1000 children from Britain and America aged four-six years olds.   Children were analyzed for their anti-social behavior and depression.

Children’s anti-social behavior and anxiety was not related to genes as some of the children in both the groups – naturally conceived or through in-vitro fertilization showed such tendencies, the study found.  The major impact was found to be of parents’ negative or positive behavior towards their children. Thus, the environment in which children are brought up contributes a lot in altering their behavior.

Published in the ‘Psychological Medicine’ journal, the study suggests that the parenting environment plays a unique role in children’s development.

“The study found parents who were hostile to their children promoted increased levels of aggression in their children”, said Professor Harold.