The Relationships Among Parental Anxiety,Parental Control And Children Anxiety:Based On Gender Differences

Anxiety is the most prevalent mental health problem during childhood,with a prevalence of 25%.Approximately 6% children are diagnosed as anxiety disorder.Moderate anxiety is regarded as a protective response,however excessive anxiety increases at risk of healthy development.Specifically,children with excessive anxiety not only have a variety of psychological adaptation problems,but also suffers insomnia,inattention or deterioration of the memory,which in turn disturb academic performance.Severely,anxious individuals might even exhibit drug abuse or suicidal ideation.Therefore,researchers usually consider children anxiety as a hot question.Numerous studies reveal that parental anxiety and parenting behaviors are closely related to children anxiety.Children with high anxious parents tend to report more anxious experience than those children with non-anxious parents.Parental control is broadly defined as restriction or the lack of autonomy-granting that parents have for their children.As the most common parenting behavior among Chinese families,it is divided into psychological control and behavioral control.Specifically,psychological control refers to parental behavior that intrudes and manipulates individual inside world;behavioral control refers to parental behavior that regulates and controls individual outside behaviors by establishing rules.Generally speaking,there is significantly positive association between children anxiety and parental psychological control,and significantly negative association between children anxiety and parental behavioral control.To our knowledge,extant studies mainly have aimed to explore the unidirectional effects of parental anxiety and parental behaviors on children anxiety,while neglected the possible effect of the opposite direction.Actually,children anxiety also can be impacted by parental anxiety and parental behaviors.To fill up the gaps,the cross-lagged design was used to investigate the associations of both directions between parental anxiety and parental psychological/behavioral control on the one hand and children anxiety on the other hand.Several empiricalstudies also show gender differences of children anxiety and parental control.Additionally,maternal anxiety is significantly higher than paternal anxiety.According to family system theory,the influence between family members is not only reflected in the relationship between parents and children,but also reflected in the relationship between husbands and wives.Hence,the present study aimed to investigate the relationships among parental anxiety,parental psychology/behavioral control and children anxiety as well as gender difference between them.The interval between two investigations was one year in the present study.The present study recruited 642 students in grades 3 to 5 and their parents from seven elementary schools in Jinan,Shandong Province.The Spence Child Anxiety Scale for Child(SCAS-C),The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale(DASS)and The Parental Control Questionnaire(PCQ)were used to investigate children anxiety,parental anxiety and parental psychological/behavioral control,separately.Preliminary analyses were used to investigate the characters of parental anxiety,parental psychological/behavioral control and children anxiety;the cross-lagged analyses was used to investigate the directions between children anxiety and parental anxiety,parental psychological/behavioral control as well as gender difference between them;based on Actor-Partner Interdependence Model,the association between parental anxiety and parental psychological/behavioral control was investigated;finally,the present study investigated the relationship among parental anxiety,parental psychological/behavioral control and children anxiety in a integration model.The results of the present study found that,(1)Maternal anxiety was significantly higher than paternal anxiety,parental anxiety decreased significantly with age of children.Both maternal psychological/behavioral control were significantly higher than paternal psychological/behavioral control;parental psychological/behavioral control decreased significantly with age of children.Compared to girls,parents reported more psychological control for boys.Girls reported more anxiety than boys;children anxiety decreased significantly with age.(2)There was bidirectional effect between parental anxiety and children anxiety.And gender difference between them was significant.Specifically,paternal anxiety could positively predict boys’ anxiety and boys’ anxiety also could positively predict paternal anxiety.However,maternal anxiety could not significantly predict children anxiety and children anxiety also could not significantly predict maternal anxiety.There were unidirectional effect between parental control and children anxiety.And gender difference between them was significant.Specifically,boys’ anxiety could positively predict maternal psychological control and paternal behavioral control could negatively predict boys’ anxiety.(3)Maternal anxiety could negatively predict maternal and paternal behavioral control;maternal anxiety only could positively predict maternal psychological control.Paternal anxiety could positively predict paternal and maternal psychological control;the predictive effects of paternal anxiety on parental behavioral control were no significant.(4)Paternal behavioral control mediated the association between paternal anxiety and boys’ anxiety.