A new meta-analysis has dropped that sought to answer the question of whether childhood maltreatment leads to later mental health problems. This study is different from typical in that it tried to address the ever-pervasive problem of genetic confounding.
Old-school readers of my blog know what I’m talking about: the overwhelming majority of studies in human science, both medical and psychological, are flawed because they don’t take genetically-caused individual variation into account:
One great example is the association between income and IQ. People from impoverished backgrounds have lower IQs, on average, than people from wealthier backgrounds. Modern Western conventional wisdom assumes that poverty causes low IQ, when the reality is in fact the other way around: lower IQ people are less able, on average, to accumulate and generate wealth and (since IQ is highly heritable) more likely to come from families with lower wealth. There are numerous such associations, so much so that it led Emil Kirkegaard to coin fifth law of behavioral genetics.
As veteran readers and my Twitter ( https://twitter.com/JayMan471) followers know, I have long maintained that parenting and family influence has little to no effect on eventual adult behavioral traits. See my Behavioral Genetics Page for more. This derives from twin, adoption, and other behavioral genetic studies, which find that the role of family influence is minimal in most behavioral traits. The central role that parenting and upbringing is assumed to play turns out to be overblown. Yet, despite this, many of the usual genetically confounded studies continue to be done.
To their credit, the authors did try to address the genetic confounding problem:
Sounds great, and certainly light-years ahead of most social science, even in the Current Year. So what did they find?
After quasi experimental adjustment, a small association between childhood maltreatment and mental health problems remained (Cohen’s d=0.31, 95% CI=0.24, 0.37). This adjusted association between childhood maltreatment and mental health was consistent across different quasi-experimental methods, and generalized across different psychiatric disorders.
Conclusions: These findings are consistent with a small causal contribution of childhood maltreatment to mental health problems. Furthermore, the findings suggest that part of the overall risk of mental health problems in individuals exposed to maltreatment is due to wider genetic and environmental risk factors.
They offer a very nice tabulation of the data:
They were also diligent to check for publication bias and all those other things that are known to screw-up meta analyses. So case closed, right? Looks like there is a residual effect that remains after you adjust for confounding. As they put it:
Regarding confounding, we found that the association between childhood maltreatment and mental health in quasi experimental adjusted models was substantially (45%) smaller than in unadjusted models. Of note, the unadjusted association was moderate in magnitude, with a Cohen’s d of 0.56, which is similar to effect sizes reported in previous meta-analyses of non-quasi-experimental studies (see Table S10 in the online supplement). This reduction in effect size after quasi-experimental adjustment suggests that a large part of the overall relationship between childhood maltreatment and mental health is confounded by preexisting risk factors for psychopathology. Research is needed to identify the specific factors that elevate risk of psychopathology in maltreated children, which might include environmental adversities (e.g., socioeconomic disadvantage (9)) and genetic liability
It would only make sense, wouldn’t it? Maybe you can’t grow a better flower by watering it more but you can certainly grow a worse flower if you don’t water it all or give it junk. So am I going to concede this point on childhood maltreatment? Nope.
I read through the paper and the supplements and it seems that there is one more confound that they didn’t address: child-to-parent effects. Troubled adults are quite often difficult, troubled children. Such children are more likely to elicit harsher treatment from caregivers. This would even be in play even if you looked at identical twins (and old-schools readers know I have been critical of inferring positive effects from twin-control studies for similar reasons).
Hence, the small residual seemingly causal association between childhood maltreatment and eventual adult mental health could be due to this. Now, the authors did also look at studies looking at institutional maltreatment (e.g., the infamous Romanian orphanages) and found a similar magnitude effect. Although child-to-caregiver effects are still a concern, the genetic confound also rears it head there, since there is a racial component to orphaned children there–more likely to be ethnic Romani, for example (a group with lower average IQ than ethnic Romanians). So I don’t if we can call this study a win for the nurture assumption, yet.
We should oppose childhood maltreatment on moral grounds–because it’s a rotten thing to do children–and not because we think it will “damage” them, particularly mentally. That belief, to me, seems like a crappy motivation to be nice to your children than being nice to them for it’s own sake.
This is the first blog post I’ve made in literally years. It’s too soon to say if JayMan is back for good–but who knows, maybe you’ll hear more of me in the future. I am opening the tip jar for anyone who has enjoyed my work, past and present. I could use a few cents right now and any little bit really does help.
For new readers, if you want a review of some of work I’ve done, much of which has aged pretty damned will in the years since I’ve written it, here’s a review:
There’s my introduction to those new to the topic of Human Bio Diversity (HBD), my thorough (but soft) introduction to the matter that I’ve written:
Mainstream discourse, including the media (and a good part of the scientific establishment itself) spreads false information. Whether it be on IQ, race, heredity, parenting, diet, health, lifestyle, or homosexuality, complete rubbish rules the day. I have attempted to remedy this here.
To learn about me, please see my About Me page. There I talk a little about my background as well as provide a roadmap to my earlier publications, including the key pieces new readers should see.
Your first reading after that should be this. The foundation of HBD and indeed all human biological research is behavioral genetics. This has produced four (well, five) laws that are fundamental, the first of which is the plain statement that Did you know that parenting (beyond ensuring your children are healthy and safe and have basic human interaction) has no real impact on how children turn out as adults? That’s right. Read all about it:
My post 200 Blog Posts – Everything You Need to Know (To Start) is just that. Here I review the topics I’ve discussed in the preceding 100 posts, including the matter of guns and violence, the American Nations (the regional ethno/cultural/political divides across North America), and the problems with some of the people who talk about this topic.
A key thing is my series on clannishness, discussing HBD Chick’s work:
And about those American Nations, my page American Nations Series indexes the posts I’ve written based on the books American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard and Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer.
Did you know that most health and lifestyle knowledge is worthless, and probably won’t have much impact on your health or lifespan?
And, there’s my critical look at mental health, and a misunderstanding of the role in human evolution in behavioral phenotypes, some of which are not valued by contemporary society
In the above post, I discuss homosexuality. The mainstream, accepted explanation for all manner of human behavioral variation, including individual and group differences, is some sort of social conditional or some sort of “environmental” effect. The one exception is sexual orientation, where we’re assured that it is 100% inborn and genetically inherited. Well, it turns out that that is not true. Indeed, this hard to reconcile with the fact that male twins are discordant for sexual orientation at least 75% of the time. See:
Millions of people are about to die in the coming weeks and months, protracted and painful deaths, unless the government steps up and acts NOW.
This is not hyperbole. I’m not exaggerating. Left unchecked, that will be the outcome of the COVID19 coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., as well as in many other countries across the world. We still have a chance to stop this, but if the response continues to be what the American government is doing, we’re in dire straits.
It’s also worth mentioning that the third addition to the JayMan family, Little Mister JayMan arrived last month. He’s celebrating his first Christmas with his family. Enjoy your holiday!
Anatoly Karlin recently wrote a post criticizing my and HBD Chick’s attribution of socio-cultural-economic differences across Europe to our old friend the Hajnal line.
The Hajnal line is a border that links Saint Petersburg, Russia and Trieste, Italy. In 1965, John Hajnal discovered it divides Europe into two areas characterized by different levels of nuptiality. To the west of the line, marriage rates and thus fertility were comparatively low and a significant minority of women married late or remained single; to the east of the line and in the Mediterranean and select pockets of Northwestern Europe, early marriage was the norm and high fertility was countered by high mortality.[1][2] [Wikipedia]
Anatoly’s arguments on this matter often rests on his inability to fit some social pattern or another perfectly to the geographic extent of the Hajnal line, as he’s wont to do. This is very much his M.O. on these things, he seems to expect perfect geographic correspondence with every social variable to the Hajnal line. It should be obvious that this is not going to happen, and it should also be obvious why. But since it’s apparently not, let me explain here.
(Now, don’t take this post to be a dig at my pal Anatoly. He’s a good force for HBD at a time when it’s badly needed. But this is a common error of thought he and others commit that I wanted to address here.)
Anatoly’s particular aim in his post is to run afoul Occam’s Razor and argue for the importance of the existence of the Iron Curtain in shaping socio-cultural values in today’s Europe, long after the Iron Curtain disappeared.
Yes, we can see that the Hajnal Line explanations do play a substantial role – e.g., Portugal, Italy, and especially Greece are rather conservative relative to Western Europe – but these effects are swamped by the effects of the Iron Curtain, as well as local effects (e.g. Poland vs. Czechia on religiosity, whose roots may stretch back to more than half a millennium). (emphasis mine)
Communism: is there anything it can’t do? It’s like the legacy of slavery for American Blacks. Its effects are felt long after its gone. And in both cases, the legacy is felt before it even existed:
But remember, the corruption of modern Russia is the legacy of communism https://t.co/LLDi1oJBrp
That’s some powerful shit, that communism. Its power to shape outside Hajnal societies projects past, present, and future!
Obviously that’s silly. In that case, what is really going on? Why do I say that the legacy of communism is a bad explanation for what we see? Why don’t cross-national social variables fit perfectly to the line, as Anatoly often points out?
Anatoly’s nitpicking for things that sometimes don’t fit the Hajnal line well of course ignores the enormous number of socio-cultural variables that do follow the Hajnal line. A simple search on my Twitter for “Hajnal” turns up many of these:
And of course I have a whole series of posts talking about this (which is a great place for newcomers to this topic to start to get up to speed with what I’m talking about here):
There’s Anatoly’s problem: he can’t see the forest for the trees!
The thing is that the ultimate source for the differences between different groups of people living at the same time in different places is biological differences between those people. That is the reason the Hajnal line pattern we see exists and has effects that continue to be felt in many different social spheres. The people outside the line are biologically different from people inside the line. The reason for this is due to differences in the historic selective pressures that operated inside the line vs. outside the line. The broad differences are discussed by me here:
But why the lack of perfect correspondence then, across different social variables? Given the above, this too should be obvious. The reason is that the selective pressures each specific population experienced were unique. Every society is different from every other society. However, there were patterns in this selection that varied in part due to geography that helped to produce the geographic patterns we see.
Hence, there isn’t going to be perfect correspondence across socio-cultural variables to any geographic pattern. Neighboring populations may be more similar in some respects and less similar in others than simple proximity would suggest. One poignant example is slightly stronger tolerance for homosexuality in Iberian populations and their derivatives than simple geography might suggest (see my post The Rise of Universalism). This should all really go without saying, but I’m saying nonetheless. Indeed, I’ve touched on the fine-grained differences of European populations, particularly intra-national ones in my post here:
it was largely these non-manorialized, clannish folks that settled along the german coast during the ostsiedlung. (settlement was very much directly west-to-east, resulting in the dialect patterns seen in map below.) explains much about northern germans/prussians, me thinks. pic.twitter.com/Vf6wVNiADl
But, much of the differences we see across European populations is due to in-situ selection. That said, all of this equally applies to the American Nations:
I’ve produced a ton of maps in my American Nations Series in a similar vein to the Hajnal line differences across Europe. Here, migration is the bigger factor rather than in situ selection (since there hasn’t been much time for it, but make no mistake, some selection has occurred). In North America, the differences stem from founder effects (the initial settlement), subsequent immigration, an assortative (self-selective) migration.
Now you may ask, but surely the legacy of communism had to have some effects, right? Long-time readers know what I think about that. But for new readers, I say again that thinking that communism is to blame for the lower average social liberalism and higher average corruption of outside the Hajnal line Europe –30 years after communism’s disappearance – is like thinking slavery is to blame for the lower average IQ and high crime rates of American blacks. It’s the sociologist’s fallacy, this time in a historic context. East and West Germany remain different from each other, long after the Berlin Wall fell. But more importantly, they were different to begin with and have been for some time.
Communism remains in place in North Korea, but North and South Korea had long historic differences, from long before the Korean War. Were the Koreas to reunite, differences would remain, just as they have in Germany.
The reason for this is because, ultimately, as Greg Cochran said, “every society selects for something”. And of course, what that something is varies from society to society (often in systematic ways).
It’s worth noting that Peter Frost published a paper not too long ago that basically ripped off HBD Chick’s idea without giving her any attribution. I must say (as I’ve said before) that I’m deeply disappointed in Peter for doing that. He, I, and Chick have been on the same page on a lot of things on the topic of HBD for a long time, and it’s a shame to see him stiffing her out of her due like this.
I don’t expect this post to change certain minds, but it should be a useful piece for those in trenches on HBD and the Hajnal line.
As always, my tip jar is very much open, especially now for reasons that will become very apparent in the next post. If you want to make a donation, it’ll be great appreciated!
For various reasons (ultimately, mostly bad reasons), my family and I need to move to a new place. This is unplanned, and it would be a severe understatement to say that we, as current, do not have enough to cover moving expenses. And, as readers know, we have another child on the way.
So, once again, I am turning to my readers and followers to for help.
EDIT: I’m adding a counter of donations received to date (will update daily):
I can’t promise my readers I’ll be any more active. If anything, between an upcoming move and a new child arriving after that, I’ll be significantly less active. Nonetheless, if you would, please donate:
If you prefer, I will also take Bitcoins:
My wallet is 1DjjhBGxoRVfdjYo2QgSteMYLuXNVg3DiJ
So, once again, let’s review some of my greatest hits so you can see why you should support the JayMan. There’s my introduction to those new to the topic of Human Bio Diversity (HBD), my thorough (but soft) introduction to the matter that I’ve written:
Mainstream discourse, including the media (and a good part of the scientific establishment itself) spreads false information. Whether it be on IQ, race, heredity, parenting, diet, health, lifestyle, or homosexuality, complete rubbish rules the day. I have attempted to remedy this here.
To learn about me, please see my About Me page. There I talk a little about my background as well as provide a roadmap to my earlier publications, including the key pieces new readers should see.
Your first reading after that should be this. The foundation of HBD and indeed all human biological research is behavioral genetics. This has produced four (well, five) laws that are fundamental, the first of which is the plain statement that Did you know that parenting (beyond ensuring your children are healthy and safe and have basic human interaction) has no real impact on how children turn out as adults? That’s right. Read all about it:
My post 200 Blog Posts – Everything You Need to Know (To Start) is just that. Here I review the topics I’ve discussed in the preceding 100 posts, including the matter of guns and violence, the American Nations (the regional ethno/cultural/political divides across North America), and the problems with some of the people who talk about this topic.
A key thing is my series on clannishness, discussing HBD Chick’s work:
And about those American Nations, my page American Nations Series indexes the posts I’ve written based on the books American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard and Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer.
Did you know that most health and lifestyle knowledge is worthless, and probably won’t have much impact on your health or lifespan?
And, there’s my critical look at mental health, and a misunderstanding of the role in human evolution in behavioral phenotypes, some of which are not valued by contemporary society
In the above post, I discuss homosexuality. The mainstream, accepted explanation for all manner of human behavioral variation, including individual and group differences, is some sort of social conditional or some sort of “environmental” effect. The one exception is sexual orientation, where we’re assured that it is 100% inborn and genetically inherited. Well, it turns out that that is not true. Indeed, this hard to reconcile with the fact that male twins are discordant for sexual orientation at least 75% of the time. See:
Here the long-awaited results. Pretty much as expected, with no major surprises. About 2/3rds Black, 1/4 White, 1/12th Asian. The only unexpected things are in my Asian ancestry. Apparently, contrary to what I have been told, I have no South Asian ancestry. Also, of my East Asian ancestry, half appears to be Southeast Asian, rather than Chinese. My Chinese component is relatively small.
And I want to say thank you to all my contributors. And a big thank you to Emil Kirkegaard, who’s generous contribution was able to put me over the top and allow me to purchase the laptop I was after. Indeed, I’m typing this post on the new laptop!
As a treat, I will soon have a new post for everyone. Stay tuned, and enjoy your Christmas and New Year!
It’s clear that I haven’t been able to post much for awhile. And I’ll be honest, that’s because a lot of my time and attention has been diverted to taking care to my two little ones. I haven’t had much opportunity to write my posts or do much research for them. Left to their own devices, I don’t see this situation changing any time soon.
However, there is one thing that might changes things. If I had a laptop, I could have more flexibility to write and research all while being to able to attend to JayMan Jr. and Little Miss Jay. For that, I need your help.
Here’s a counter, that will be updated daily, of my donations on this funding drive to date:
$427
Here’s one of the laptops I’m looking at, at Amazon:
This laptop is currently running for ~$905. That’s my goal. Chip in what you can. And if you know someone with really deep pockets that would like to do what they can to help out the (much beleaguered) topic of HBD, please invite them to contribute as well!
You can make a contribution via Paypal here:
I have another treat for my readers. I recently sent away to 23andMe, taking advantage of their recent sale. I eagerly await my results, and when they come back, I will post them here.
So let’s review some of my greatest hits so you can see why you should support the JayMan. There’s my introduction to those new to the topic of Human Bio Diversity (HBD), my thorough (but soft) introduction to the matter that I’ve written:
Mainstream discourse, including the media (and a good part of the scientific establishment itself) spreads false information. Whether it be on IQ, race, heredity, parenting, diet, health, lifestyle, or homosexuality, complete rubbish rules the day. I have attempted to remedy this here.
To learn about me, please see my About Me page. There I talk a little about my background as well as provide a roadmap to my earlier publications, including the key pieces new readers should see.
Your first reading after that should be this. The foundation of HBD and indeed all human biological research is behavioral genetics. This has produced four (well, five) laws that are fundamental, the first of which is the plain statement that Did you know that parenting (beyond ensuring your children are healthy and safe and have basic human interaction) has no real impact on how children turn out as adults? That’s right. Read all about it:
My post 200 Blog Posts – Everything You Need to Know (To Start) is just that. Here I review the topics I’ve discussed in the preceding 100 posts, including the matter of guns and violence, the American Nations (the regional ethno/cultural/political divides across North America), and the problems with some of the people who talk about this topic.
A key thing is my series on clannishness, discussing HBD Chick’s work:
And about those American Nations, my page American Nations Series indexes the posts I’ve written based on the books American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard and Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer.
Did you know that most health and lifestyle knowledge is worthless, and probably won’t have much impact on your health or lifespan?
And, there’s my critical look at mental health, and a misunderstanding of the role in human evolution in behavioral phenotypes, some of which are not valued by contemporary society
In the above post, I discuss homosexuality. The mainstream, accepted explanation for all manner of human behavioral variation, including individual and group differences, is some sort of social conditional or some sort of “environmental” effect. The one exception is sexual orientation, where we’re assured that it is 100% inborn and genetically inherited. Well, it turns out that that is not true. Indeed, this hard to reconcile with the fact that male twins are discordant for sexual orientation at least 75% of the time. See:
Now I know many of these pages and posts need maintenance (and please do point out such problems if you find them). But that too is something I will have more capacity to do when I have my new laptop. So please donate! Help bring back JayMan!
If you prefer, I will also take Bitcoins (I know they’re currently surging in value)
My wallet is 1DjjhBGxoRVfdjYo2QgSteMYLuXNVg3DiJ
If we can get this going by Christmas, I can take advantage of Christmas sales. And hey, what better Christmas present than contributing to the cause of HBD? Donate today!
An F.A.Q.-style set of responses to the common erroneous objections to race, heredity, and IQ, with links to relevant research and information resource. A must have!
The Hajnal line is a border that links Saint Petersburg, Russia and Trieste, Italy. In 1965, John Hajnal discovered it divides Europe into two areas characterized by different levels of nuptiality. To the west of the line, marriage rates and thus fertility were comparatively low and a significant minority of women married late or remained single; to the east of the line and in the Mediterranean and select pockets of Northwestern Europe, early marriage was the norm and high fertility was countered by high mortality.[1][2] [Wikipedia]
But why the lack of perfect correspondence then, across different social variables? Given the above, this too should be obvious. The reason is that the selective pressures each specific population experienced were unique. Every society is different from every other society. However, there were patterns in this selection that varied in part due to geography that helped to produce the geographic patterns we see.
Communism remains in place in North Korea, but North and South Korea had long historic differences, from long before the Korean War. Were the Koreas to reunite, differences would remain, just as they have in Germany.
And about those American Nations, my page American Nations Series indexes the posts I’ve written based on the books American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard and Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer.
To learn about me, please see my About Me page. There I talk a little about my background as well as provide a roadmap to my earlier publications, including the key pieces new readers should see.
NEW! See here
See here. 
JayMan's Blog