Challenging parenting behaviour and childhood anxiety disorders: a role for fathers?

The relationship between certain parenting behaviours and offspring anxiety has been the subject of extensive research. Whilst often described as parenting behaviours, the majority of research has focussed on mothers, ignoring the role of fathers. This thesis addresses this gap, exploring the relationship between father’s behaviours and childhood anxiety disorders via a novel parenting construct, termed ‘Challenging Parenting Behaviour’ (CPB). Paper 1 examined the relationship between recalled CPB and current adult anxiety. An exploratory factor analysis identified three latent constructs underlying adults’ recall of CPB; Social and Novelty CPB were associated with lower reported adult anxiety, and fathers’ Teasing CPB was related to increased adult anxiety. Extending upon these findings, Papers 2 and 3 examined the concurrent associations between CPB and childhood anxiety, whilst also considering the role of parental anxiety. Paper 2 identified that fathers reported to engage in more CPB than mothers, yet only mothers CPB was able to predict child anxiety diagnosis. Importantly, CPB from both caregivers was associated with reduced anxiety symptoms. Paper 3 developed a novel measure for assessing CPB, testing this measure on a sample of fathers. This study also examined the effect of fathers’ CPB on child risk-taking, and the relationship between fathers’ CPB and child behavioural inhibition (BI). Children took more risks when playing with their father than when alone. No evidence was found for a relationship between fathers’ CPB and BI, nor between CPB and anxiety, except for a partial relationship between a subdomain of CPB; rough-and-tumble play, and child anxiety diagnosis. Neither paper displayed evidence for a relationship between parent anxiety and CPB. Finally, Paper 4 evaluated the measurement invariance of a measure of CPB across Dutch and Australian mothers and fathers of preschool-aged children. The Australian sample of this study was drawn from Papers 2 and 3. There was evidence of partial scalar invariance, indicating that the groups differed on some subscales of the questionnaire. Importantly, CPB from mothers and fathers predicted fewer anxiety symptoms and anxiety disorders for all groups. Taken together, the results of this thesis present unique information about fathers’ (and mothers’) CPB and its relation to offspring anxiety, suggesting that CPB may be associated with lower report of child anxiety.