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Parenting and childhood anxiety: theory, empirical findings, and future directions
Author(s) -
Wood Jeffrey J.,
McLeod Bryce D.,
Sigman Marian,
Hwang WeiChin,
Chu Brian C.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/1469-7610.00106
Subject(s) - psychology , anxiety , developmental psychology , shyness , extant taxon , observational study , parenting styles , clinical psychology , childhood development , psychiatry , medicine , pathology , evolutionary biology , biology
Theories of anxiety development suggest that parental acceptance, control, and modeling of anxious behaviors are associated with children's manifestations of anxiety. This paper reviews research published in the past decade on the relation between parenting and childhood anxiety. Observed parental control during parent–child interactions was consistently linked with shyness and child anxiety disorders across studies. Mixed support for the role of parental acceptance and modeling of anxious behaviors was found in observational studies. However, there was little evidence supporting the contention that self‐reported parenting style was related to children's trait anxiety. Because of limitations associated with past research, inferences about the direction of effects linking parenting and child anxiety cannot be made. A conceptual framework based on recent models of anxiety development (e.g., Vasey & Dadds, 2001) is presented to aid in the interpretation of extant research findings and to provide suggestions for future research and theory development. Improved methodological designs are proposed, including the use of repeated‐measure and experimental designs for examining the direction of effects.