Abstract
Parental behaviors, most notably overcontrol, lack of warmth and expressed anxiety, have been implicated in models of the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders in children and young people. Theories of normative development have proposed that different parental responses are required to support emotional development in childhood and adolescence, yet age has not typically been taken into account in studies of parenting and anxiety disorders. In order to identify whether associations between anxiety disorder status and parenting differ in children and adolescents, we compared observed behaviors of parents of children (7–10 years) and adolescents (13–16 years) with and without anxiety disorders (n = 120), while they undertook a series of mildly anxiety-provoking tasks. Parents of adolescents showed significantly lower levels of expressed anxiety, intrusiveness and warm engagement than parents of children. Furthermore, offspring age moderated the association between anxiety disorder status and parenting behaviors. Specifically, parents of adolescents with anxiety disorders showed higher intrusiveness and lower warm engagement than parents of non-anxious adolescents. A similar relationship between these parenting behaviors and anxiety disorder status was not observed among parents of children. The findings suggest that theoretical accounts of the role of parental behaviors in anxiety disorders in children and adolescents should distinguish between these different developmental periods. Further experimental research to establish causality, however, would be required before committing additional resources to targeting parenting factors within treatment.
Highlights
Parental behaviors, most notably overcontrol, lack of warmth and expressed anxiety, have been implicated in models of the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders in children and young people
Adolescents undertake fewer shared activities with their parents and spend considerably less time with their family (Larson and Richards 1991). These results suggest that parenting of anxious adolescents may involve lower levels of warmth and higher levels of rejection/hostility than middle childhood, and that parental control may continue to be of relevance
We examined the parenting behaviors of children with an anxiety disorder, non-anxious children, adolescents with an anxiety disorder and non-anxious adolescents
Summary
Ethical approval for the study was given by the National Research Ethics Service (NRES) London - Brent Research. To be included in the study, all children/adolescents were required to meet diagnostic criteria for a current anxiety disorder on the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule (ADIS-C/P; Silverman and Albano 1996) and for this to be identified as the primary problem They were not invited to participate if they had psychotic symptoms, substance dependence, an autistic spectrum disorder, conduct disorder, a risk of deliberate self-harm, if they were taking psychoactive medication, currently receiving therapy for their anxiety disorder or if they, or their parent, did not understand and speak English at a level that would enable them to complete the procedures or had any significant intellectual impairment. The children with anxiety disorders scored significantly higher than the non-anxious children on parentreported symptoms of anxiety (SCAS-P: t(55)=7.36, p=.001), low mood (SMFQ-P: t(55)=4.49, p=.001), and behavioral problems (SDQ-P conduct: t(55)=2.85, p
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