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Using a Murine Model of Psychosocial Stress in Pregnancy as a Translationally Relevant Paradigm for Psychiatric Disorders in Mothers and Infants
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Interactions between mothers and children: impacts of maternal and child anxiety

Phoebe S Moore1, Shannon E Whaley, Marian Sigman

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Phoebe.Moore@Duke.edu

Journal of Abnormal Psychology
|August 18, 2004
PubMed

This study, an expansion of an earlier study of parenting behaviors of anxious mothers, examined the relationship of both mother and child anxiety disorders to mother behavior in parent--child interactions. Participants were 68 mother--child dyads with children ranging in age from 7 to 15 years. Mothers and children completed diagnostic evaluations and engaged in conversational tasks; behaviors were rated by coders who were blind to diagnosis. Mothers of anxious children, regardless of their own anxiety, were less warm (p <.05) toward their children. They also granted less autonomy (p <.01). There was an interaction between mother and child anxiety in predicting maternal catastrophizing (p <.01), with anxious mothers and nonanxious mothers of anxious children likely to catastrophize. Theoretical and research implications are discussed.

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