ORIGINAL ARTICLE Intergenerational Transmission of Childhood Conduct Problems A Children of Twins Study

Context: The familial nature of childhood conduct prob-lems has been well documented, but few genetically in-formed studies have explicitly explored the processes through which parental conduct problems influence an offspring’s behavior problems. Objective: To delineate the genetic and environmen-tal processes underlying the intergenerational transmis-sion of childhood conduct problems. Design: We used hierarchical linear models to analyze data from a Children of Twins Study, a quasiexperimen-tal design, to explore the extent to which genetic factors common to both generations, unmeasured environmen-tal factors that are shared by twins, or measured charac-teristics of both parents confound the intergenerational association