Nurturing your child's DNA Examining parental influences on DNA methylation and child mental health

‘Nurturing your child’s genes’ considers the biologically embedding of two environmental factors that are shown to influence child mental health: maternal psychosocial stress during pregnancy (or “prenatal stress”) and parenting. In particular, it examines the influence of these parental factors on DNA methylation –an epigenetic modification – in relation to child mental health from pregnancy through to middle childhood. Across four studies with longitudinal and intervention designs, a picture emerges that parental factors may leave different marks on children’s DNA methylation at different times during development. However, it remains unclear whether these DNA methylation marks, which were measured in peripheral tissues, reflect a mechanism by which early life experiences have a long-term impact on child mental health. Suggestions for future research are discussed, including the importance of developing DNA methylation-based biomarkers to better characterize risk and resilience factors and processes.