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Anxious parents often have a constant fear of passing on their anxiety to their children. Researchers at Dalhousie University in Canada investigated how anxiety is transmitted from parents to children and whether it depends on gender.
From mother to daughter and from father to son
The researchers whose study was published in the journal JAMA Network Open, recruited 398 children: 203 girls around 11 years old and 195 boys around 10 years old. They conducted interviews to establish diagnoses of anxiety disorders in parents and their children.
And it turns out that anxiety in the same-sex parent was associated with increased rates of anxiety disorders in the child, while anxiety disorders in the opposite-sex parent were not. In short, anxiety would therefore be transmitted from mother to daughter and from father to son.
This is an unprecedented finding, as the researchers pointed out: “Although anxiety is known to run in families, the relative contribution of genes and environment is unclear. (…) The association of the sex of parents and their offspring with transmission anxiety disorders has not been studied before”.
The role of environmental factors
One of the strongest known risk factors for developing an anxiety disorder is having a parent with an anxiety disorder. The effect increases when both parents are involved.
According to the study, sharing a household with a non-anxious same-sex parent was associated with lower rates of anxiety in children. On the other hand, the presence of a non-anxious parent of the opposite sex did not slow down the development of anxiety in the child.
“This finding suggests a possible role of environmental factors, such as learning, in transmitting anxiety from parents to children. Future studies may establish whether treating parents’ anxiety can protect their children from developing an anxiety disorder, concluded the researchers.