Parenting and childhood anxiety: theory, empirical findings, and future directions

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…