The Relationship Between Parenting And Anxiety In Adolescents:Multiple Mediating Effects Of Satisfaction Of Basic Psychological Needs And Resilience

With the rapid development of society and the increasing pace of life,anxiety has become a heated topic,giving rise to wide discussion among scholars.It seems that we have already stepped into an era of anxiety,as almost everyone has more or less experienced anxiety in life,such as the worry of making mistakes,the fear of being alienated or the concern of being teased.Anxiety is an individual’s excessive worry and fear to the future and may be accompanied by negative emotions such as somatic symptoms and withdrawal.Moderate degree of anxiety is beneficial,for it can not only help people evaluate their capabilities objectively and fulfil their potential,but also enhance people’s vitality and spark their creativity.However,if the anxious emotion emerges too frequent or too intense to control,it will exert negative impact on people,which will lead to individual anxiety disorders in the long run.Ecological systems theory points out that one of the most closely connected micro-systems is family system.A large number of studies have also found that adolescents’ anxiety is closely related to parenting behavior.Parental indifference and over-protection rearing behavior will lead to adolescent anxiety problems,while parental care rearing can reduce the level of adolescent anxiety.In essence,anxiety is mostly a production of frustrate of personal needs,since Freud believes that anxiety is the product of the frustrate of happiness need,Sullivan believes that anxiety is the product of the frustrate of relatedness need,Rollo May believes that anxiety is the product of the frustrate of competence need.The basic psychological needs theory points out that there are three basic psychological needs of the individual,those basic needs are universal,including relatedness,competence and autonomy needs,and the satisfaction of these three needs will be beneficial to all the individual.In contrast,when the needs of individuals are frustrated,it will not only hinder the development of their potential,but also lead to their ill-being.The empirical studies also found that the relationship,competence and autonomy needs are closely related to the positive quality and emotional adaptation of adolescents.In particular,the satisfaction of psychological needs is helpful to the development of individual self-esteem,gratitude,and resilience,while the frustration of psychological needs will lead to anxiety and depression.In the previous studies on adolescent anxiety,most of them investigated the direct or indirect effects of external environment on anxiety,such as family and school factors.Although a large number of studies have explored the related factors of adolescent anxiety from different perspectives,few empirical studies have focused on the relationship between psychological needs and anxiety.Therefore,the purpose of this study was to explore the mechanism of environmental factors and personal factors on anxiety from the perspective of individual needs.Specifically,in this study,with parenting,basic psychological needs,resilience and anxiety as variables,investigated the mediating role of basic psychological needs and resilience in the relationship between parenting and anxiety to provide advice from the family perspective to improve the resilience of young adolescents and reduce their anxiety.Taking the parental bonding instrument,basic need satisfaction in general scale,Connor-Davidson resilience scale and Spence children’s anxiety scale as the research tools,855 adolescents from grade five to senior three were selected to carry out a questionnaire survey.The data were analyzed by variance analysis and regression analysis,and the structural equation model was constructed to discuss variables’ relations.The main conclusions of this study were as follows:(1)In terms of parenting,compared to non-only adolescents,parents of only-child adolescents adopt more autonomy parenting.Compared with pupils and junior high school students,parents of high school students adopt less indifference parenting,and as the rise of school stage,parents adopt more autonomy parenting.Male adolescents’ satisfaction of competence need was higher than female;junior high school students and high school students’ satisfaction of relatedness need was higher than pupils.In terms of resilience,junior high school students and high school students was higher than pupils.There was no difference in anxiety between male and female adolescents,so did only or non-only adolescents and those of three types school stage.(2)There was a negative correlation between adolescent anxiety and caring parenting,satisfaction of relatedness need,satisfaction of competence need,satisfaction of autonomy need,and resilience respectively,while a positive correlation was found between adolescent anxiety and indifference parenting and over-protection.There was a positive correlation between resilience and care parenting,autonomy parenting,satisfaction of relatedness need,satisfaction of competence need,and satisfaction of autonomy need respectively,and negative correlation with indifference parenting.There was no correlation between anxiety and autonomy parenting,resilience and over-protection parenting,satisfaction of relatedness need and over-protection parenting.(3)Basic psychological needs and resilience played a multiple mediating role between parenting and adolescent anxiety.Parenting influenced the adolescent anxiety in three ways.Firstly,parenting affected anxiety level of adolescents directly.Secondly,parenting indirectly influenced anxiety level of adolescents through satisfying their basic psychological needs.Thirdly,by satisfying basic psychological needs and adjusting resilience,parenting had indirect effect on the degree of adolescent anxiety.