Anxiety-Promoting Parenting Behaviors in Adolescents with Social Anxiety: Controlled with a Non-Clinical Sample

Abstract

Background : The majority of research on parenting behaviors in social phobia has been conducted with mother–child dyads, but there is still a gap in current knowledge about the role of fathers’ parenting behaviors and adolescence period. This study focuses on the role of parent gender, parental attitudes, and familial factors in an adolescent population. Methods: Our study sample consisted of adolescents diagnosed with social phobia (n = 60), healthy non-clinical adolescents (n = 30), and the parents of adolescents with social phobia (n = 46) and non-clinical adolescents (n = 30). A Sociodemographic Information Form, Family Interview Inventory, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, and The Parent Attitude Research Instrument were administered to all groups. Results: The parents of adolescents with social phobia have reported a higher overprotective mothering attitude when compared to parents of healthy adolescents ( P mother < .001 and P father = .009). The mothers’ overprotective parenting style and the fathers’ avoidance levels were found as predictive factors for adolescents’ social phobia in logistic regression analysis (respectively; exp(β) = 0.868 and P = .002; exp(β) = 0.927 and P = .017). Conclusion: Our results indicate the necessity of considering both the parents in the research. We suggest that controlled prospective future studies on different ages, diagnostic groups, and cultures, which will take the gender of both parents and patients into account, may reveal important data on the relation between parenting behaviors and social anxiety.

Internalizing Problems in Childhood and Adolescence: The Role of the Family

“…This could be related to lower parental stress, which leads to a more favorable family environment and, in turn, fewer emotional problems for children. As Cheunga et al 26 Han and Shaffer et al 27 and Özkula et al 28 point out, parental emotional dysregulation is related to children’s internalizing symptoms. Raposo and Francisco 20 affirm that children who witness more family conflicts are at greater risk of developing these types of problems.…”

“…Parental emotional dysregulation is related to children’s internalizing symptoms. 26 - 28 Toro 18 argued that when a child develops an internalizing problem during childhood, their own emotional and behavioral changes force parents to act differently than they did when the problem first arose.…”