The link between parental anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance in a social referencing situation

The link between parental anxiety and children’s

fear and avoidance in a social referencing situation

situatie

Master thesis Orthopedagogiek

Faculty of social and behavioural sciences

Graduate School of Childhood Development and Education Universiteit van Amsterdam

Jitske Kuling 10673601 Dr. Evin Aktar

The link between parental anxiety and children’s

fear and avoidance in a social referencing situation

Abstract

Background: Children of parents with anxiety disorders are more likely to develop anxiety disorders. An important factor in the transmission of anxiety is social referencing (SR), which is children’s ability to use emotional signals of adults to guide their response to a new

situation. We investigated the link between expressed parental anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance in an SR task. Method: Seventy-three 7.5-year-old children participated with both their parents separately. The participants were confronted with a stranger. Parental expressed anxiety, children’s fear and avoidance were observed. Results: Parental expressed anxiety was not significantly associated with children’s fear and avoidance and did not differ between fathers and mothers. No significant difference was found between boys and girls and mothers and fathers. This study did not show evidence of a more important role of anxiety of the same-sex parent. Conclusion: This study found no evidence of the transmission of anxiety through SR in 7.5-year-olds. No difference was found in the association of mothers’ vs. fathers’ expressed anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance. The associations do not differ across mother and son, mother and daughter, father and son or father and daughter.

Keywords: Social referencing, parental anxiety, father’s role. Samenvatting

Kinderen van ouders met een angststoornis hebben een groter risico om zelf een angststoornis te ontwikkelen. Een belangrijke factor in de overdracht van ouderlijke angst op kinderen is social referencing (SR). In deze studie is onderzocht wat de link is tussen

ouderlijke angst en angst en vermijding van het kind in een SR taak. Drieënzeventig kinderen van 7.5 jaar oud hebben samen met hun ouders geparticipeerd in dit onderzoek. De kinderen en hun ouders werden geconfronteerd met een vreemde in een SR taak. Tijdens de taak werden uitgedrukte ouderlijke angst en de angst en vermijding van het kind geobserveerd. Uit de resultaten komt naar voren dat er geen significante associatie is tussen uitgedrukte

ouderlijke angst en de angst en vermijding van het kind in een SR taak. Vaderlijke uitgedrukte angst had verschilde niet van moederlijke uitgedrukte angst. Tevens is naar voren gekomen dat kinderen niet meer kwetsbaar zijn voor de angst van de ouder van hetzelfde geslacht.

Introduction

Anxiety runs in the family (Hettema, Neale & Kendler, 2001; Beidel & Turner, 1997; Turner, Beidel, & Costello, 1987). Children of parents with anxiety disorder were found to be seven times more likely to develop an anxiety disorder than children of parents without an anxiety disorder (Turner et al., 1987). Moreover, children of parents with anxiety disorders are not only at increased risk of the development of anxiety disorders, but also of a broad spectrum of other psychiatric disorders (Beidel & Turner, 1997). Parents of children with anxiety disorder have an increased likelihood of exhibiting anxiety disorders themselves (Edison, Evans, McHolm, Cunningham, Nowakowski, Boyle & Schmidt, 2011).

Just as in many other psychiatric illnesses, both genetic and environmental factors play a role in the etiology of anxiety disorders (Drake & Ginsberg, 2012). Evidence suggests that environmental factors such as child-parent attachment (Colonnesi, Draijer, Stams, van der Bruggen, Bögels & Noom, 2011), child temperament (Turner, Beidel & Wolff, 1996; van Brakel, Anna, Muris, Bögels & Thomassen, 2006), family environment (Drake & Ginsberg, 2012) and parental behaviour (McLeod, Wood & Weisz, 2007; Rapee, 1997; Wood, McLeod, Sigman, Hwang & Chu, 2003; Edwards, Rapee & Kennedy, 2010; Ginsburg, Grover & Ialongo, 2004; Siqueland, Kendall & Steinberg, 1996) play an important role in the transmission of anxiety.

Parental anxiety may be contributing to childhood anxiety via modeling, observational learning and through reinforcement of anxious and avoidant behaviour (Fisak &

Grills-Taquechel, 2007). One important factor in the transmission of parental behaviour is social referencing (SR). SR refers to a skill that children develop in their first year of life. It is defined as the children’s ability to use the emotional signals and behaviour of adults to guide their behavioural and emotional response to a new or ambiguous situation (Feinman & Lewis, 1983; Aktar, Majdandžić, Vente & Bögels, 2013). In early experimental studies the idea that child behaviour and affective reactions change in line with parent behaviour was supported (Feinman, Roberts, Hsieh, Waqyer, & Swanson (1992). In more recent studies SR showed to play a role in the development of child anxiety (Möller, Majdandžic, Vriends & Bögels, 2014). For example, De Rosnay, Cooper, Tsigaras, & Murray (2006) investigated the impact of indirect expressions of maternal social anxiety on infant interactions with a stranger via SR. Infants (N = 24) first observed their mother in a conversation with a stranger after which they had to interact with the stranger themselves. The stranger greeted the infant, offered the infant a small toy, and stretched out his arms in a position to pick the infant up. The results

showed that infants’ fear and avoidance towards a stranger increased when mothers were anxious in the interaction with the stranger.

Murray, de Rosnay, Pearson, Bergeron, Schofield, Royal-Lawson & Cooper (2008) investigated the reactions of infants at 10 to 14 months to an unfamiliar adult with anxious (N = 79) and non-anxious (N = 77) mothers in a SR situation. The stranger first interacted with the mother and then approached and interacted with the infant. The results showed that infants of mothers with social phobia showed increasing avoidance of the stranger from 10 to 14 months, particularly when they showed high levels of Behavioural Inhibition.

In a longitudinal study, Aktar et al. (2013) investigated the predictive value of paternal and maternal anxiety (lifetime anxiety disorders and expressed parental anxiety) on infants’ fear and avoidance during novel stimuli in two SR situations. Infants (N = 122) were

confronted with a stranger and a robot as novel stimuli in two different SR situations. Infants’ fear and avoidance and parents’ expressed anxiety were observed. In this study, there was no significant evidence for the predictive value of paternal and maternal anxiety on infants’ fear and avoidance. They found that infants with a temperamental disposition for anxiety might be more affected by parental anxiety signals when their parents express more anxiety. This may lead to avoidance of novelty.

Gerull and Rapee (2002) investigated the influence of parental modelling on fear and avoidance towards novel stimuli in a sample of 30 children, ranges from 15 to 20 months old N = 30). The toddlers were shown a rubber snake and spider, which were accompanied by either negative or positive facial expressions of their mothers. Results showed that children’s fear and avoidance towards a rubber snake and spider increased after negative reaction from their mother.

Aktar, Majdandžić, Vente & Bögels (2014) investigated the link between parental anxiety (parental lifetime anxiety as well as expressed parental anxiety) and toddler fear and avoidance during SR situations. Toddlers (N = 117) participated with both parents in a

longitudinal study. Children were confronted with a stranger and a robot in SR situations with their mother and their father separately. The study revealed that parental lifetime social anxiety disorders are a stronger predictor of children’s fear and avoidance than parental expressed anxiety in a SR task in toddlerhood. These findings support the idea of Murray et al. (2008) that the end of infancy may be a sensitive time for the transmission of anxiety from parent to children in SR tasks.

The role of fathers has been neglected in research related to different types of

the role of fathers in the etiology, prevention and treatment of childhood anxiety. They stated that the role of fathers has been neglected in research so far and that very little is known on their role in childhood anxiety. Möller et al. (2014) investigated the different roles of fathers and mothers and they suggest that these different roles are evolutionary based. Fathers may be specialized in external protection, such as approaching potentially dangerous animals and unfamiliar humans and exploring new territory. Mothers may be more specialized in internal protection, such as feeding and soothing (Möller et al., 2014). Möller et al. (2014)

hypothesize that the impact of paternal anxious behaviour on children’s anxiety is bigger than the impact of maternal anxious behaviour. The results of this study show that more paternal, but not maternal, expressed anxiety was positively associated to infant’s fear and avoidance.

Aktar et al. (2013) found that one-year-old infants showed more avoidance when their parents were more anxious towards novelty; this was true for fathers and mothers. In the same study they also found an equally important role for fathers and mothers in the transmission of anxiety in toddlerhood. Bögels and Perotti (2011) suggest that fathers with social anxiety disorder, more than mothers with social anxiety disorder, will transmit their anxiety on their children. They found that fathers with social anxiety induce an increase of maternal care, which may lead to a lack of exposure. Bögels and Phares (2008) found that when fathers, other than mothers, are not involved, do not show warmth, do not encourage autonomy of the child and if they are anxious themselves, the child is at a greater risk to develop anxiety symptoms. Bögels and Phares (2008) hypothesizes that the role of fathers (e.g. physical play) in the children’s development is more affected by their fears and anxieties than the role of mothers (e.g. care).

Möller et al., (2013) suggested that parents prepare their children for their future roles as males and females. The hypothesis was that boys and girls are more susceptible to the behaviour of the same-sex parent. However, the evidence did not support this and they found no evidence for the difference in susceptibility to the behaviour of the same-sex parent. They suggest that the differences between the influence of the father and mother are more subtle than assumed and that the content of the anxiety domains they used in the study design could maybe not reveal these subtle differences.

The studies investigating the transmission of anxiety from parents to children through SR have until now been focused on infancy and toddlerhood. This is based on the assumption that, children are most susceptible for the transmission of anxiety via SR in infancy and toddlerhood. Feinman et al. (1992) stated that as children grow up they may have more experience with new and ambiguous situations and the effect of the reaction of parents in SR

situations become more complex and indirect. Additionally, older children may have more experience with strangers. Nevertheless parents may still have a large influence on the reaction of their children in SR situation.

In this study we observed 7.5-year-old children and their response to novelty in SR situations. We aimed to observe how the children’s reactions to a stranger are affected by parental reactions. We observed parent’s expressions of anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance. To examine parent’s anxiety level and children’s fear and avoidance in novel and ambiguous situations, children and their parents were confronted with a stranger and had to interact with this stranger. This study is the first that investigates the transmission of anxiety of parents to their 7.5-year-old child. The hypotheses are therefore based on evidence of earlier studies that investigated younger children. It is important to understand how anxiety is learnt through parent-child social learning. There is evidence of early transmission of anxiety with anxious parents, but there is a lack of information about the transmission of anxiety from parents to their older children. Furthermore, there is evidence of transmission of anxiety with anxious mothers via SR, but there is lack of information about the transmission of anxiety with anxious fathers. If we would know more about possible mother-father differences in SR, early interventions aimed at preventing anxiety disorders in childhood might be specified for each age and for each single parent.

First, we expected a significant association between parental expressed anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance. In other words, we hypothesized that children do show more fear and avoidance when their parents show higher levels of anxious behaviour during the task. If the transmission of anxiety via SR is important at this age, parental expressed anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance should be related. Second, we compared infants’ fear and avoidance when they were with mothers vs. fathers to explore whether fathers, compared to mothers are more important in the transmission of anxiety. As evolutionary theory by Bögels & Perotti (2011) about father and mother differences states that fathers will be more important than mothers in the transmission of anxiety, especially in later ages, there would be a

difference between the influence of mother vs. father anxiety. But in previous research (Aktar et al., 2013; Aktar et al., 2014) this difference is not found. Thus, if the effect is similar as in earlier ages, we would expect no difference in importance. Third, we explored if girls are more susceptible for mothers’ anxiety signals and boys for fathers’ anxiety signals. Previous findings (Möller et al., 2014; Aktar et al., 2013) suggest that there is no difference of

susceptibility for the same-sex parent. Bögels and Phares (2008) suggest that for infants and preschool children, same-sex models might be partial influential. As the children grow up,

same-sex parental behaviour may be more important and influential than in comparison to earlier ages. We therefore hypothesize that there will be a difference in susceptibility for the same-sex parental expressed anxiety in an SR task because the children in this study are older than children investigated in earlier study.

Method Participants

The sample consisted of 73 couples with their 7.5-year-old child. Socio-demographic characteristics are presented in Table 1. The families are participants of a large, longitudinal study on social development from infancy to middle childhood (Aktar et al., 2013; Aktar et al., 2014; Majdandžić, Möller, Bögels & Van den Boom, 2011; Nikolić, de Vente, Colonnesi & Bögels, 2016, de Vente, Majdandžić, Colonnesi & Bögels, 2011). Parents and children participated in prenatal, 4-month, 12-month, 30-month and a 4.5-year-old measurements. The parents were recruited via advertisements in magazines and on parenting websites, or via flyers provided at pregnancy courses and baby shops. The ethics committee of the University of Amsterdam approved the project. Participants provided written informed consent prior to their participation. The SR task was completed by 73 mothers and 71 fathers, 40 girls and 33 boys at 4.5 years. The socio-demographic characteristic of the sample is presented in table 1. Procedure

The observations took place in the lab of the University of Amsterdam. The children visited the lab twice, the first visit with one parent, and the second with the other parent. The observations took place in the period between January 2015 until July 2016.

SR task

The parent and child were seated in a room in the lab. The parent was seated on a chair in the middle of the room and the child was seated behind a table with the facing towards the parent. The SR task consisted of the following phases: in phase I the stranger walked into the room and started a conversation with parent about his or her personality. In phase II the stranger told the parent and child that she would like to ask the child a number of questions and asked the child to swap chairs with the parent. In phase III the stranger asked the child several questions about his or her school, friends, playing preferences and favourite activities. Different strangers conducted the task during father and mother visits. The coding protocol from Aktar et al. (2014) was adapted for the coding of the child and parent

behaviour. The behaviours were coded on 5-point scales.

Parent behaviour during the SR task

The coding of parental expressed anxiety was based on the facial (e.g. anxious, frozen faces), bodily (e.g. stiff body, stiff and jerky movements), and verbal or vocal (avoiding discourse, exaggerated smiles, laughs and gestures, domination of the conversational space) expressions of parental anxiety.

Child behaviour during the SR task

1. Children’s fear was based on facial (e.g. a fearful or wary expression including wide eyes, wary brow and characteristic mouth movements), vocal (e.g. a cry face, fretting, crying), or bodily manifestations of anxiety (e.g. sudden decrease in activity often associated with a passive ‘sunken-in’ posture with or without averted gaze, tense or frozen posture and possibly trembling).

2. Child avoidance involved behaviours like increasing the distance between the self and the stranger, by turning or by leaning away from the stranger, turning the back on the

stranger, turning the head away, averting gaze (avoidance of meeting the person’s eyes), hiding the face, or simply ignoring the person. The child’s attempts to avoid contact and interaction with the stranger were observed.

The observations were split into smaller time intervals and the final scores were obtained by averaging the interval scores. Two pairs of observers were trained to score the parent and child behaviours. Twenty-nine % of the SR data was double coded to obtain the inter-observer reliability. The inter-observer reliabilities for the child and parent variables (intraclass correlations) were .63 for children’s fear and .97 for children’s avoidance and .89 for parental expressed anxiety.

Statistical analysis

To analyse the link between parental expressed anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance in an SR task two different analyses were used. To analyse the raw associations of parental expressed anxiety with children’s fear and avoidance in an SR situation, correlation analyses were performed. To test the hypotheses about the difference between the level of fear and avoidance in boys and girls and the difference in influence of parental gender on fear and avoidance in an SR task a repeated measures ANCOVA model was used. The outcome variables were fear and avoidance of the child and the independent, repeated variable was the gender of the parent. The gender of the child was included as a between subjects variable in

these models. To test the link between parental expressions of anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance we included maternal and paternal expressions of anxiety as covariates in this model.

All analyses were performed using SPSS 21.0 and a significance level of p ≤ 0.05 was used in all analyses. The assumptions for ANCOVA analyses were checked. The variable ‘child fear’ did not comply with the normality assumption, the variable showed a negative skew. This is because of the percentage of children that scored a three for anxiety (66% of the children scored a score of three for anxiety with their mother and 64% of the children scored a score of three for anxiety with their father). Thus, the results concerning children’s fear

should be interpreted with caution. On the other hand, the distribution of the avoidance scores did comply with the normality assumption.

First Pearson’s correlations between children’s fear and avoidance and parental expressed anxiety were examined. Subsequently, the repeated measures ANCOVA were conducted to examine the differences between the level of fear and avoidance in boys and girls, and with mothers and fathers. To examine the differential influence of maternal and paternal expressions of anxiety for girls and boys, we tested the two-way interactions between maternal and paternal expressed anxiety with child gender, and with parent gender. To

examine potential same-sex parent effects, we also tested the interaction between child and parent gender in the ANCOVA model.

Results Main Analysis

The association of parental expressed anxiety with children’s fear and avoidance

The correlations between parental expressed anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance are presented in table 2. As shown in table 2, parental expressed anxiety was not significantly related to children’s fear and avoidance. Children’s fear and avoidance in the SR task with their mother were not significantly associated with maternal (Fear: r = .07, p = .577; Avoidance: r = .06, p = .645) or paternal expressed anxiety (Fear: r = -.03, p = .816; Avoidance: r = -.08, p = .495) with fathers’ expressions of anxiety. The results show a significant association between children’s fear and avoidance reactions in the SR task with mothers (r = .52, p = .000) as well as with fathers (r = .61, p = .000). Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between children’s fear (r = .30, p = .012) with mothers and fathers and avoidance (r = .35, p = .003) with mothers and fathers in the SR task.

The difference in influence of parental gender on fear and avoidance and the difference of this influence on boys and girls

To measure the difference in influence of parental gender on fear and avoidance and the difference of this influence on boys and girls, an ANCOVA model is used. The results are presented in table 3 and table 4 for fear and avoidance respectively. The results show that there is no significant main effect for mothers expressed anxiety (F(1, 67) = .80, p = .373) or fathers expressed anxiety (F(1, 67) = .70, p = .407) on children’s fear and no significant main effect for mothers expressed anxiety (F(1, 67) = .98, p = .326) or fathers expressed anxiety (F(1, 67) = .05, p = .830) on children’s avoidance in de SR task. There is no significant main effect for child gender in fear (F(1, 67) = .00, p = .998) and in avoidance (F(1, 67) = .13, p = .724).

The interaction effect between parent gender and maternal anxiety was not significant for children’s fear (F(1, 67) = .22, p = .640), nor for children’s avoidance (F(1, 67) = .245, p = .623). The interaction effect of parent gender and paternal anxiety was not significant for children’s fear (F(1, 67) = .99, p = .343) and not significant for children’s avoidance (F(1, 67) = 1.62, p = .208) as well. The interaction between parent gender and child gender was not significant, neither for fear (F(1, 67) = .00, p = .958) nor for avoidance (F(1, 67) = .01, p = .932).

Discussion

This study investigated the links between parental expressed anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance in an SR task. The results reveal no evidence for the transmission of anxiety through SR. No significant association was found between parental expressed anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance responses.

The results of previous studies in infancy showed that infants were susceptible for parental expressed anxiety in SR tasks. It may be that children of 7.5 years old are, just as children of 2.5 years old (Aktar et al., 2014), are less susceptible for their parents’ expressed anxiety than in infancy. Campos and Stenberg (1981) suggest that SR may be more important for infants and toddlers than for older children because uncertainty is greatest during the early years. They also suggested that infants’ reliance on others’ interpretation would decrease with age. In a more recent study Dunne & Askew (2013) compared children’s fear and avoidance (N = 60) for novel animals in positive or fearful situations with their mother or a stranger in school-aged children (6- to year-olds). They found that, unlike young infants, 6- to 10-year-olds learn fear-related responses to novel stimuli from both mothers and strangers. These findings suggest that children in this age group can learn from both strangers and mothers or

parents in general. This may explain the not significant relation between parental expressed anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance. The children in this study may be equally

influenced by their parent’s behaviour as well as the stranger’s behaviour. However, Feinman (1982) states that SR activity continues and even expands during childhood, because the child is exposed to an ever-widening range of new events. On the other hand, Feinman et al. (1992) states that children’s own ideas may have an increasingly bigger influence on their responses to novel stimuli as they grow older and have more experience in meeting and interacting with strangers. The children in this study may have more experience with strangers, therefore they may be less anxious and avoidant, even if their parents show anxious behaviour. Further research is required to provide evidence for the role of SR in later childhood.

Second, regarding the difference in the expressed anxiety of mothers vs. fathers in SR, no significant differences were found. Children showed similar levels of fear and avoidance with mothers and fathers in the SR task. This supports previous evidence that fathers may be as important as mothers (Aktar, et al., 2013; Aktar, et al., 2014). Thus, no support was found for the model of previous studies that fathers’ expressed anxiety is more influential than mothers’ expressed anxiety (Bögels & Perotti, 2011; Bögels & Phares, 2008).

Third, no gender differences were found: no significant difference was found between fear and avoidance of boys and girls, and/or between the mothers’ and fathers’ expressed anxiety. Which is in line with previous studies (Aktar, et al., 2013; Aktar, et al., 2014). Fourth, this study did not show evidence of a susceptibility difference of the same-sex parent. Which is in contrast to our hypothesis, as we expected children of this age to be more

susceptible for the same-sex parent expressed anxiety. It may be that the children in this age group (7.5 years old) are not as susceptible for the same-sex parent behaviours as adolescents do (Bögels & Phares, 2008).

The findings of this study should be interpreted with consideration of the following limitations. First, the inter-observer reliability of the children’s fear was lower than in earlier ages and in the avoidance. A possible explanation for this is the percentage of children that scored a score of 3 for anxiety (66% of the children scored a score of three for anxiety with their mother and 64% of the children scored a score of three for anxiety with their father). Second, children visited the lab twice and took the task twice, once with their mother and once with their father. This may cause learning effects and may influence the fear and avoidance of the children in the second time they were confronted with the same stimuli. Third, the parents in this study were mostly highly educated and were from a higher

may be not representative of the population and the results may not be generalized to the population. Fourth, the observations took place in a laboratory. The artificiality of the setting may produce unnatural behaviour that does not reflect real life. This causes low ecological validity. Thus, the findings of this study must be interpreted with caution.

Conclusion

This study extends our knowledge of the transmission of anxiety in childhood by showing no evidence of the transmission of anxiety through SR in 7.5-year-olds. This is in contrast with the hypothesized susceptibility of children for expressed anxiety of their parents and it is in contrast with previous findings that suggest that infants show more fear and avoidance when their parents express fear in an SR situation. Because this is the first study that investigated the influence of parental expressed fear on children’s fear and avoidance in this age group, we can conclude that in SR situations parental expressed fear is less influential on children’s behaviour in a novel and ambiguous situation than it is in infancy or

toddlerhood. In this study, no difference was found in the association of parental expressed anxiety and children’s fear and avoidance between mothers and fathers, therefore it makes no difference for the children’s fear and avoidance whether their mother or father is present. The associations do not differ across mother and son, mother and daughter, father and son or father and daughter.

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Table 1.

Socio-Demographic Characteristic of the Sample

Mother M (SD, range) Father M (SD, range) Parents’ age 38.49 (4.17, 28-50) 43.01 (5.48, 30-67) Infants’ age 7.6 (0.35, 6-8) 7.6 (0.41, 6-8) Educational levela 7.14 (1.05, 2-8) 6.63 (1.79, 1-9) Professional levelb 8.54 (2.24, 2-11) 8.42 (2.39, 2-11) Monthly income 4.56 (1.92, 1-9) 5.57 (1.69, 1-9) Current working statusc 3.72 (1.93, 1-9) 3.48 (1.15, 1-8)

Note: a Measured with an 8-point scale from 1 (primary education) to 8 (university).

b _{Measured with an 11-point scale from 1 (manual labour for which no education is required)} to 11 (labour for which university degree is required).

c _{Measured with an 7-point scale from 1 (<500 euros/m) to 7 (>5000 euros/m)}

Table 2.

Correlation Between Parental Expressed Anxiety and Children’s Fear and Avoidance Variables Correlations 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1. Child fear M r - p 2. Child avoidance M r ,52 ** _- p ,000 3. Anxiety M r ,07 ,06 - p ,577 ,645 4. Child fear F r ,30 * _,25* _{,12 -} p ,012 ,038 ,303 5. Child avoidance F r ,36 ** _,35** _{,15 ,61}** _- p ,002 ,003 ,229 ,000 6. Anxiety F r -,16 ,10 -,13 -,03 -,08 - p ,186 ,391 ,281 ,816 ,495

Table 3.

Repeated Measures and Two-way Analysis of Covariance of Difference in Association Between Fear of Boys and Girls and Mothers and Fathers

Source df SS MS F p Maternal anxiety Paternal anxiety Child gender Parent gender*maternal anxiety 1, 67 1, 67 1, 67 1, 67 .04 .37 4.26 .00 .04 .37 4.26 .00 .80 .70 .00 .22 .373 .407 .998 .640 Parent gender*paternal anxiety 1, 67 .27 .27 .99 .343 Parent gender*child gender 1, 67 .79 .79 .00 .958 Table 4.

Repeated Measures and Two-way Analysis of Covariance of Difference in Association Between Avoidance of Boys and Girls and Mothers and Fathers

Source df SS MS F p Maternal anxiety Paternal anxiety Child gender Parent gender*maternal anxiety 1, 67 1, 67 1, 67 1, 67 .17 .00 .02 .02 .17 .00 .02 .02 .98 .05 .13 .25 .326 .830 .998 .623 Parent gender*paternal anxiety 1, 67 .14 .14 1.62 .208 Parent gender*child gender 1, 67 .00 .00 .01 .932