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Associations Between Children’s Telomere Length, Parental Intrusiveness, and the Development of Early Externalizing Behaviors

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Abstract

Shorter telomeres mark cellular aging and are linked to chronic stress exposure as well as negative physical and psychological outcomes. However, it is unclear whether telomere length mediates associations between early stress exposure and later externalizing problems, or whether boys and girls differ in pathways to these concerns. We therefore examined associations between telomere length, early stress via negative caregiving, and children’s externalizing symptom development over time in 409 three-year-old children and their parents. Telomere length mediated the association between early parental intrusiveness and later rule-breaking behavior; however, this association was moderated by children’s biological sex such that parent intrusiveness was related only to boys’ rule-breaking. Findings support the notion that children’s telomere length may mark individual differences in responses to negative early caregiving, and highlight a potential mechanism contributing to the development of rule-breaking problems in boys.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [grant number CIHR MOP86458], the Children’s Health Research Institute (CHRI), and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS). These agencies had no role in study design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, report writing, or the submission of this paper for publication.

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Daoust, A.R., Thakur, A., Kotelnikova, Y. et al. Associations Between Children’s Telomere Length, Parental Intrusiveness, and the Development of Early Externalizing Behaviors. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 54, 672–682 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-021-01279-3

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