Anxious cognitions and parental behaviour are important in the development of child anxiety. The current review aims to critically evaluate parenting as a key factor in the development of anxious cognitions in children. Online database searches of PsycInfo, Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations and Web of Science were systematically searched using key terms related to 'parent', 'child', 'anxiety' and 'cognitions'. Included studies (N = 15) were quality assessed and study findings were appraised in line with a cognitive behavioural model of the parental pathways to the development of anxious cognitions in children. Reviewed studies confirmed that parents have a role in the development of their children's anxious cognitions via behaving in fearful ways, reducing their child's autonomy, verbally communicating fear to their child and indirectly via their own expectations about their child. Parental use of minimisation and punitive methods were found to weaken the relationship between child anxious cognitions and child anxiety. Future research should examine parental behaviour and child anxious cognitions when parents are faced with real-life threatening events.

Parenting behavior and practices contribute to the intergenerational relationship between parent and child anxiety, with parental control being a consistent predictor of child anxiety. Parental experiential avoidance refers to how a parent copes with their internal world in the context of parenting. Little is known about how this relatively new parenting concept relates to child anxiety. The current study tested the indirect effect of parent anxiety on child anxiety through parental control and parental experiential avoidance; the indirect effect of parent anxiety on parental control through parental experiential avoidance; and the moderating effect of parental experiential avoidance on the relationship between parental control and child anxiety. Using a cross-sectional design, parents ( N = 85) from a community sample of 8–12-year-old children self-reported on a survey measuring parent anxiety, child anxiety, parental control, and parental experiential avoidance. A hierarchical regression indicated that parental experiential avoidance significantly predicted child anxiety and accounted for further variance in child anxiety, over, and above parental control. There was an indirect effect of parent anxiety on child anxiety through parental control and parental experiential avoidance. Parental experiential avoidance moderated the relationship between parental control and child anxiety, such that the relationship was only significant at high levels of parental experiential avoidance. The current study provides support for the role of parental experiential avoidance in an intergenerational understanding of anxiety. Future research should replicate the study with a clinical sample. Theoretical and practice implications are considered.