The relationships of child and parent factors with children's anxiety symptoms: Parental anxious rearing as a mediator

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Abstract

A considerable body of research has identified various child and parent factors that contribute to and maintain anxiety symptoms in children. Yet relatively few studies have examined child factors (including threat-based cognitive bias, neuroticism, gender, puberty and age) as well as parent factors (including maternal anxiety and child-rearing style) in association with child anxiety symptoms, and the extent to which these factors serve as unique predictors of child anxiety. Moreover, research is lacking on whether parent factors such as child-rearing style, which is often targeted in early intervention and treatment programs, might mediate the association between child factors such as neuroticism, and child anxiety symptoms. In a sample of 85 children between 7 and 12 years of age with varying levels of anxiety, including those with diagnosed anxiety disorders, results showed that children were more anxious when they were reported to be more advanced in pubertal status by their parents, when they had a tendency to interpret more threat in ambiguous situations, and when they self-reported more neuroticism. Regarding parent factors, maternal self-reported trait anxiety and children's perceptions of their mother as having an anxious child-rearing style were associated with higher levels of child anxiety. Moreover, when these correlates of child anxiety were examined in a multivariate model to identify those that had direct as well as indirect associations via maternal anxious child-rearing style, child neuroticism remained as a significant and unique predictor of child anxiety that was also mediated by maternal anxious-rearing. Child neuroticism also mediated the relationship between child pubertal stage and anxiety symptoms. Results are discussed in terms of relevant theory and empirical evidence regarding the roles of both child and parent factors in the development of child anxiety.

Highlights

► Child and parent factors contribute to child anxiety symptoms. ► We examine numerous child and parent factors as correlates and predictors of child anxiety. ► Child neuroticism, cognitive bias and pubertal status were associated with higher child anxiety. ► Maternal anxiety and anxious/overprotective parenting were linked to higher child anxiety. ► Maternal anxious parenting and child neuroticism were unique predictors of child anxiety.

Section snippets

Threat-based cognitive bias

Cognitive theories of anxiety disorders emphasise that anxious individuals are more likely to interpret ambiguous and mildly threatening stimuli as overly dangerous and threatening compared with non-anxious peers (e.g., Mogg & Bradley, 1998). Several studies highlight that threat interpretation bias is a cognitive correlate of childhood anxiety using homograph tasks (Hadwin et al., 1997, Taghavi et al., 2000) and ambiguous vignette paradigms (Bögels et al., 2003, Bögels and Zigterman, 2000,

Maternal anxiety

All major models of childhood anxiety disorders emphasise the critical role of parents in the origins and maintenance of anxiety disorders in children (e.g., Rapee, 2002; Rapee & Spence, 2004). Parental anxiety is a significant risk factor for child anxiety, given the higher than expected incidence rates of anxiety in parents of anxious children, compared to the general population (Last et al., 1987, Last et al., 1991). Although paternal and maternal anxiety appear to confer risk equally for

The present study

Overall, the current study extended the existing literature by examining well-established child and parent variables that have been found to play a role in the development and/or maintenance of child anxiety, but have rarely been examined in a single study. As described in multiple theories and models of the development of anxiety disorders (see McClure and Pine, 2006, Murray et al., 2009, Rapee et al., 2009 for reviews), we expected that parent factors (i.e., maternal anxiety and maternal

Participants

Participants were 85 children between 7 and 12 years of age (M age = 10.43; SD = 1.41). Of these, 49 were recruited from a local primary school (25 boys; 24 girls) and 36 were recruited when they made contact with an anxiety disorders treatment programme (16 males; 20 females). Fifteen percent had a principal diagnosis (i.e., most severe) of generalised anxiety disorder, 17.8% had a specific phobia, 8% had social phobia, 2.2% had separation anxiety disorder, and 57% had no psychiatric diagnoses.

Associations between study measures

Pearson correlations were estimated to examine bivariate relationships of children's anxiety symptoms with all other measures. As can be seen in Table 1, mothers’ anxious rearing (r = 57, p < .001) and overprotection (r = .27, p < .05), but not emotional involvement or rejection, were significantly associated with children's reports of their anxiety symptoms. More specifically, when mothers were more anxious and overprotective in their rearing, children had more anxiety symptoms. Moreover, as expected,

Discussion

The first aim of this study was to examine the extent to which child and parent factors are uniquely associated with child anxiety symptoms. The second goal was to determine whether associations of child factors (which included child neuroticism and cognitive bias) with child anxiety were indirect via maternal rearing behaviour. The participants were a large sample of children with varying levels of anxiety, including those with diagnosed anxiety disorders. Data were collected from both

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