The Influence of Parental Anxious Rearing on Child Depression: The Moderating Effect of Self-Competence

Xu Li,Beibei Ma,Zheng Zhang

doi:10.22158/jpbr.v3n3p13

Abstract

This study explored the relationship between parental anxiety and depression in children, and studied the moderating role of children’s self-competence. Through a series of research tools, the anxious rearing, children’s depression and children’s self-competence are studied respectively. The results show that anxious rearing can significantly predict children’s depression, and self-competence can alleviate this effect.

Highlights

Depression, as a negative emotion, is mainly manifested as low mood, loss of interest, mental exhaustion, decreased self-evaluation, pessimistic disappointment about the future, feelings of helplessness and meaninglessness etc. (Gong et al, 2020)
According to the stress-buffering model (Cohen & Wills, 1985), anxious parenting is a risk factor for development, high self-esteem can be used as a protective factor to reduce depression in children receiving anxious rearing
In Model 1, the direct effect of parental anxiety education on children’s depression is analyzed without considering the effect of self-competence, (t=-4.157, p

Summary

Introduction

Depression, as a negative emotion, is mainly manifested as low mood, loss of interest, mental exhaustion, decreased self-evaluation, pessimistic disappointment about the future, feelings of helplessness and meaninglessness etc. (Gong et al, 2020). Studies have shown that negative parenting styles are significantly associated with an increase in anxiety and depression symptoms (Zlomke, & Young, 2009). Studies have shown that some people can quickly adapt to emergencies in life and restore normal mental functions within a quick adjustment period (Bonanno, 2004; Rutter, 1993; Wu, 2011) This shows that children may be affected by parental parenting, there may be other individual factors that prevent children’s depression. Diathesis-stress Model believes that individuals who carry a certain “risk” or “vulnerability” gene are more likely to show certain mental illness or behavioral problems when they are disadvantaged (Belsky, 1997) From this perspective, anxious rearing is a risk factor that can exacerbate depression in children with low self-esteem. Self-competence has a moderating effect between anxious rearing and children’s depression

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion