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Do Mother’s Metacognitions, Beliefs, and Behaviors Predict Child Anxiety-Related Metacognitions?

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Abstract

Background

Recent research suggests that adults and children with anxiety disorders have a particular set of metacognitive beliefs and strategies. Knowing whether parents’ metacognitions, beliefs and behaviors are associated with their children’s metacognitions is important for understanding how anxiety-related metacognitions and clinical anxiety develop.

Objective

We hypothesized that there are positive relationships between mother and corresponding child anxiety-related metacognitions even after controlling for maternal depression, anxiety and stress symptoms. We also hypothesized that maternal beliefs about child anxiety and maternal controlling behavior would be positively related to child metacognitions and would account for any associations between mother and child metacognitions.

Methods

The study employed a cross-sectional design in a community sample of 7–12 year old children and their mothers. Mothers and children completed questionnaires to assess anxiety-related metacognitions and an interaction task to assess mothers’ overinvolvement. Mothers also completed questionnaires regarding their beliefs about child anxiety and controlling rearing behavior. We examined correlations between variables before investigating which maternal variables made unique contributions to the variation in children’s metacognitions in a series of multiple regressions and mediation analyses.

Results

Mothers’ positive worry beliefs and cognitive confidence contributed a modest amount of unique variance in the corresponding beliefs in children. Mothers’ and children’s metacognitions were positively associated.

Conclusions

The unique contributions of mothers’ anxiety-related metacognitions on children’s anxiety-related metacognitions found in our study indicate that a metacognitive-parental intervention for preventing and treating child anxiety is worth investigation. Our findings place anxious metacognitions in a developmental context.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the mothers and children who participated in this study, as well as the Center for Angst staff and students involved in data collection.

Funding

This study was funded by the Marie Curie Actions Foundation (Grant No. 300300) awarded to Prof. Barbara Hoff Esbjørn.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 2A, 1353, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Nicole N. Lønfeldt, Barbara H. Esbjørn, Nicoline Normann & Sonja Breinholst

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Toledo, 2801 West Bancroft Street, Toledo, OH, 43606, USA

    Sarah E. Francis

Authors
  1. Nicole N. Lønfeldt
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  2. Barbara H. Esbjørn
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  3. Nicoline Normann
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  4. Sonja Breinholst
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  5. Sarah E. Francis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicole N. Lønfeldt.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Lønfeldt, N.N., Esbjørn, B.H., Normann, N. et al. Do Mother’s Metacognitions, Beliefs, and Behaviors Predict Child Anxiety-Related Metacognitions?. Child Youth Care Forum 46, 577–599 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-017-9396-z

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