From Toddler Fearful Temperament and Maternal Overprotection to Maternal and Child Anxiety Across Early Childhood

• In Event: Parental and Child Influences on the Transmission and Development of Anxiety

Abstract

Factors associated with the development of anxiety symptoms across childhood are multifaceted. The extant literature highlights interactions among child temperament, parents’ own anxiety symptoms, and parenting in predicting increased risk for anxiety symptom development (e.g. Ganiban et al., 2011). Theoretical models of child-elicited effects on parents (e.g., Dadds & Roth, 2001) have proposed that parents’ behaviors are likely not independent of children’s temperament; fearful children likely elicit more protective responses and these parenting behaviors reinforce both child anxiety and these types of parenting behaviors. For instance, we have shown that maternal overprotection mediates the association between toddler fearful temperament and social withdrawal at age 5 (i.e., social anxiety risk) (Kiel & Buss, 2014). Most of this literature focuses on child outcomes, and in particular, the effects of parental characteristics and behavior on child outcomes. What remains largely unanswered in the literature is whether there are indirect paths from temperament to trajectories of maternal and child anxiety symptoms via maternal overprotection, and subsequent bidirectional effects of maternal and child anxiety symptoms across early childhood. The current study addresses this gap.

Participants for the present study included 160 children (49% female) and their mothers from a larger longitudinal study of toddlers’ temperament and socioemotional development from age 2 through kindergarten. Children participated in a laboratory visit at age 2, and behavioral measures of temperament and maternal protective behaviors were coded across several fear-eliciting situations. Fearful temperament was assessed by calculating propensity to display fear relative to the threat of the task. Lower scores indicate lower thresholds for fear sensitivity (child was more likely to exhibit fearful behaviors in low-, relative to high- threat contexts). To assess maternal overprotection, we averaged maternal protective behaviors during low-threat tasks (puppet show and clown) during the Lab-TAB (Buss & Goldsmith, 2000). Mothers later self-reported on their general anxiety symptoms using the General Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GADQ; Newman et al., 2002) when children were 3 and 5, and their children’s overanxious symptoms using the McArthur Health and Behavior Questionnaire (HBQ; Armstrong et al., 2003) when children were aged 3, and during the fall (approx. age 5) and spring (approx. age 6) when children were in kindergarten.

Path analysis using a structural equation model (with FIML) with manifest variables was used to test the hypothesized bidirectional paths. The final model fit the data well, x2 = 1.47, p = .48, CFI = 1.00, RMSEA < .001, SRMR = .01. The results of the path analysis are presented in Figure 2. Consistent with previous studies, maternal overprotection was associated with fearful temperament. Fearful temperament had a direct effect on maternal general anxiety when children were aged 3, and an indirect effect with maternal overprotection as a mediating variable, β=0.07, p = .02. We also found that maternal overprotection partially mediated the association between fearful temperament and age 3 child overanxiousness. Though we found no bidirectional associations between maternal and child anxiety symptoms over time, the results show parent-to-child effects through maternal overprotection and child-to-parent effects through early fearful temperament.

Authors

• Kristin A. Buss, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• Anna M Zhou, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Austen Trainer, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Non-Presenting Author