Maternal Modeling of Coping: Relation to Child Anxiety

ABSTRACT

The present study investigated maternal coping behaviors in clinically anxious and control mothers during two mildly stressful parent-child interaction tasks. We hypothesized that anxious mothers would demonstrate decreased problem-focused and increased emotion-focused coping. We further expected that children of anxious mothers would also demonstrate decreased problem-focused coping, and that maternal anxiety would predict child coping. A total of 49 mother-child dyads participated in the present study. Anxious mothers engaged in significantly less adaptive coping (i.e., active coping, modeling) and significantly greater maladaptive coping (i.e., venting of emotion, negative emotion, discussion of emotion) than did non-anxious mothers. In addition, anxious mothers were rated by independent observers as less able to cope with the tasks. Children of the two groups did not differ with respect to type of coping displayed. Implications of these findings for the impact of parental anxiety on children are discussed, and directions for future research are proposed.

KEYWORDS:

• Anxiety
• parenting
• coping behaviors