Parental Beliefs About Child Anxiety as a Mediator of Parent and Child Anxiety

Abstract

Previous research has consistently supported a link between child and parental anxiety. Less well understood, however, are mediators of this association. Recent work has suggested the importance of parental cognitions in understanding the relationship between parental and child anxiety. The present investigation, employing a cross-sectional design, evaluates the potential mediational role of a specific parental cognitive variable, namely parental beliefs about the child’s anxiety, in the relationship between parental and child anxiety. Among a sample of clinic-referred youth (n = 103) with a variety of clinical presentations, parental beliefs about the harmfulness of the child’s anxiety significantly mediated the relationship between parent and child anxiety. This finding provides preliminary support for the role of parental beliefs about child anxiety in mediating the link between parent and child anxiety.