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Family Processes in Child Anxiety: the Long-Term Impact of Fathers and Mothers

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Abstract

The current study investigated links between parent and child anxiety, and family process factors, over a 9 year period. Specifically, we examined the role of partner conflict, attachment security and parental autonomy granting in explaining changes in child, father, and mother anxiety symptoms. We utilized data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 661), from when target children were in first grade (6 years), fifth grade (10 years), and 15 years of age. We tested a longitudinal path model including both fathers and mothers, and found that the model was a good fit for the data. We also found that lower attachment security to fathers and a restriction of maternal autonomy granting predicted which children maintained anxiety into adolescence. Partner conflict explained the association between earlier and later parental anxiety, which is a novel finding in the literature. Together, these findings suggest that fathers play an important long-term role in child anxiety, alongside the role of mothers.

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Notes

  1. Household type classifications included traditional nuclear families, step-father families, two-parent extended or extended and augmented families, two-parent augmented families, nontraditional nuclear families, nontraditional step-father families, nontraditional extended or extended and augmented families, and nontraditional augmented families. All family types that were not step-father families included a father figure who was classified as the child’s biological or adoptive father. We combined these latter families into an “intact mother-father” group for the purposes of this study, which contrasts with the “step-father” group. All data included in the step-father group was reported by or collected about step-fathers.

  2. Note: Race was categorized as Caucasian and Other; Household type was categorized as intact mother-father families and mother-stepfather families.

  3. Although we did not include a direct link in the model from partner conflict to child anxiety at time 3 as we were examining mediated pathways from partner conflict to child anxiety, upon the suggestion of a reviewer we tested this direct link given its significance in prior research, and found that it was not a significant direct path, nor did adding it improve model fit.

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  1. Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, 600 Hilltop Dr, Kent, OH, 44240, USA

    Kaela L. Stuart Parrigon & Kathryn A. Kerns

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  1. Kaela L. Stuart Parrigon
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  2. Kathryn A. Kerns
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Correspondence to Kaela L. Stuart Parrigon.

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Stuart Parrigon, K.L., Kerns, K.A. Family Processes in Child Anxiety: the Long-Term Impact of Fathers and Mothers. J Abnorm Child Psychol 44, 1253–1266 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-015-0118-4

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