Behavioral Genetics 101: How Genes Shape Mental Health w/ Professor Kathryn Paige Harden

Raising Good Humans

Voicing Change Media

Education, Kids & Family, Parenting

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2026

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, I sit down with behavioral geneticist and professor Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden to talk about what behavioral genetics can actually tell us about our kids—and what it can’t. We unpack the reality of psychiatric risk, family history, and the limits of control, and why genes are not destiny. We discuss how thousands of tiny genetic differences shape mental health, why diagnoses are messier than we think, and how warmth and firm boundaries still matter more than any “magic bullet.” I WROTE MY FIRST BOOK! Order your copy of The Five Principles of Parenting: Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans Here: https://bit.ly/3rMLMsL Subscribe to my free newsletter for parenting tips delivered straight to your inbox: https://dralizapressman.substack.com/ Follow me on Instagram for more: @raisinggoodhumanspodcast Sponsors: Ello: Visit ElloProducts.com/CleanStart and use code RGH at checkout for 20% off your first purchase Brodo: Head to Brodo.com/HUMANS for 20% off your first subscription order and use code HUMANS for an additional $10 off Ka'Chava: Go to https://kachava.com and use code HUMANS for 15% off your first order Experian: Get started with the Experian App now! Fora: Become a Fora Advisor today at Foratravel.com/HUMANS Bloom: Go to bloomnu.com with code HUMANS for 20% off your first order Produced by Dear Media See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
0:09.8	Welcome to Raising Good Humans podcast.
0:12.5	I'm Dr. Elisa Pressman, and I had such a cool conversation I'm sharing with you today with Professor Catherine Page Harden.
0:20.8	She's a professor in the Department
0:22.1	of Psychology at University of Texas at Austin. She leads the developmental and behavioral
0:28.3	genetics lab. She just wrote another book that blew my mind called Original Sin. It's on the
0:35.9	genetics of vice,
0:37.9	the problem of blame, and the future of forgiveness.
0:41.4	A lot of this conversation is really helping us
0:43.5	understand behavioral genetics.
0:45.9	And if our children are at risk for developing
0:50.4	psychiatric disorders, or there are some genetic risks regarding anything that you know
0:57.3	from addiction to psychopathology and so if that's the case what you can do about it and all
1:05.6	of our kind of difficult conversations about blame shame andolution. I thought it was a very new and
1:15.2	interesting way to think about things. I'm excited to share it with you. And remember to go to
1:20.8	my substack, Dr. Lisa Pressman.substack.com to kind of check in every week and get a little summary of our conversations.
1:31.3	And of course, if you want to do the monthly Zoom, that's really fun.
1:35.4	It's small.
1:36.6	It's under $5 a month.
1:38.7	And I love getting to talk to you individually.
1:42.8	McLean is an interesting hospital to train in because it's a private hospital.
1:49.7	And it attracts, you know, it has a kind of storied pass.
	...

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