(SSCP1-12) SSCP Submission: Parental Anxiety, Warmth, and Control Relate to Real World Emotional Functioning in Clinically Anxious Youth

Child anxiety has been linked to parenting, increased emotional reactivity, and less adaptive emotion regulation. More specifically, youth anxiety has been found to be positively associated with both anxious and controlling parenting, and negatively associated with warm and sensitive parenting. Previous work has demonstrated the impact of controlling and warm parenting on emotional functioning in anxious kids, but it is unclear how combinations of anxious, controlling and warm parenting may impact emotional outcomes and use of emotion regulation strategies in this population. The aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship between these combinations of parenting and emotion reactivity and regulation in response to real world negative events. 

Methods: Participants were 108 children aged 9-14 years (mean = 11.00, SD = 1.46) meeting DSM-IV criteria for anxiety disorder. Primary caregivers (N=102 moms) were asked to spend 5 minutes discussing a topic that caused their child to worry and help them devise coping strategies. Interactions were coded using the Living in Familial Environments coding system (LIFE; Hops et al., 1995); the frequency of warm, controlling and anxious affect was calculated throughout the interaction. In addition, children participated in up to 14 ecological momentary assessment (EMA) calls over 5 days. During these calls, participants identified recent negative events and rated their feelings of nervousness on a 5-point scale. Participants were also asked if they used adaptive (acceptance, problem solving, and restructuring) and/or maladaptive (distraction, avoidance, rumination, and physiological responding) emotion regulation strategies in response to each negative event reported. 

Results: Multilevel models indicated that the interaction between warmth, control and anxious parenting affect predicted both child nervousness (p < 0.022) and child use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies (p < 0.01). Models revealed that warmth was positively related to nervousness when anxious affect was low and control was high, and negatively related to nervousness when both anxious affect and control were low. In comparison, warmth was negatively related to adaptive emotion regulation strategy use both when anxious affect was low and control was high, and when anxious affect was high, and control was low. In contrast, none of our variables or their interactions were predictive of maladaptive emotion regulation strategy use. 

Conclusion: Our results suggest that warm parenting can either be a risk or resilience factor for emotional functioning in anxious youth, depending on the levels of co-occurring anxious affect and controlling behavior. An integrated assessment of parenting practices may lead to a more comprehensive and personalized approach to parenting interventions and support programs.