Sometimes “we” can help: parents’ pronoun use buffers fear and anxiety transmission

ABSTRACT

Background and objectives:

Parents’ natural language when describing health-related threats reflects parents’ cognitions that may shape their transmission of anxiety and fear. Parents’ greater communal focus (i.e., higher we-talk) and less self-focus (i.e., lower I-talk) may buffer against intergenerational fear/anxiety transmission. The current study investigated whether the relation between parents’ and children’s anxiety and pandemic-related fear differed by parent we- and I-talk.

Design and Methods:

Parents of 114 children (2–19 years; M = 9.75, SD = 3.73) completed online measures assessing children’s and parents’ anxiety and COVID-19-related fears, and engaged in a written reflection on their early pandemic experiences. The proportion of parents’ we-talk and I-talk during the reflection was obtained using Linguistic Inquiry Word Count software.

Results:

Results of multilevel structural equation models were partially consistent with expectations: The protective effect of we-talk was only observed for parents with lower fear/anxiety. For parents with higher fear/anxiety, higher I-talk was associated with lower child fear/anxiety. At higher levels of parent we-talk and at lower levels of I-talk, there was an unexpectedly positive association between parents’ and children’s fear/anxiety.

Conclusions:

The concordance between parents’ and their children’s fear/anxiety differs depending on parents’ natural language when reflecting on the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Natural language
• we-talk
• parent
• child
• dyad
• pandemic

Acknowledgments

We thank the families for their participation, and Danielle Ladensack, Aileen Gonzali, Nicole Fonacier, and Reese Wix for their assistance in the study set up and recruitment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The first author was supported as a postdoctoral fellow on NIMH T3215750.