Parental Influences and Child Internalizing Outcomes across Multiple Generations

Our objective was to test ways parental caring and over-controlling rearing approaches predict internalizing problems across multiple generations of offspring: from grandparents to parents and from parents to children. We examined whether retrospective perceptions of grandparents’ caring and over-controlling behaviors predicted parents’ current anxiety problems and rearing behaviors toward their own children in a sample that participated in a clinical trial for youth with a specific phobia (SP). We further tested whether parental anxiety and rearing approaches (as perceived by parents and children) predicted children’s longitudinal outcomes of internalizing problems and severity of the SP over time, above and beyond the effects of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) for the treatment of the SP. We were ultimately interested in testing indirect, intergenerational processes from grandparents to children to identify buffers or risks of anxiety via patterns of care and control from parents. Data were drawn from 113 treatment-seeking children with SPs and their parents (52.2% female, ages 6–15, M age = 8.77, SD = 1.75) from pre-treatment to three-year follow-up. Hierarchical linear models tested the effects of earlier grandparent rearing behaviors on parent and child outcomes and the effects of parent anxiety and rearing behaviors on child outcomes. Models supported indirect effects of grandparent rearing behaviors onto child outcomes via ongoing parent anxiety problems and select rearing behaviors, suggesting these intergenerational processes could potentially maintain anxiety (i.e., use of over-controlling behaviors) or buffer offspring from anxiety risks (i.e., use of care behaviors).