The Role of Maternal Trait and Real-World Emotion Dysregulation and Experiential Avoidance in Maternal and Child Anxiety Symptoms

Anxiety is among the most commonly diagnosed mental health conditions worldwide. Understanding factors associated with its development and maintenance throughout the lifespan remains a priority. Three potential factors are examined in the current study: emotion dysregulation, experiential avoidance, and the intergenerational transmission of anxiety via parental modeling of emotional responding. While there is support for each of these constructs as predictors of anxiety, particularly at a trait-based level, relationships among these constructs in the context of parenting remain poorly understood, especially during in-vivo stressful parent-child interactions. The present study utilized both trait-based self-report and real-world ecological momentary assessment measures of maternal anxiety, emotion dysregulation, and experiential avoidance in order to elucidate critical correlates of intergenerational anxiety transmission. The three primary aims were to: 1) examine associations among maternal trait anxiety, emotion dysregulation, and experiential avoidance 2) assess relationships among these maternal variables in real-world, stressful parent-child interactions, and 3) investigate the potential moderating role of maternal real-world emotion dysregulation and experiential avoidance in the parenting context in the relationship between maternal and child trait anxiety. Results indicated that there were positive associations between maternal trait anxiety, trait emotion dysregulation, and trait experiential avoidance. During stressful parent-child interactions, higher real-world emotion dysregulation and experiential avoidance both predicted higher real-world anxiety. Finally, while maternal trait anxiety positively predicted child trait anxiety, neither real-world emotion dysregulation nor experiential avoidance moderated this relationship. By providing a better understanding of the function of maternal emotion dysregulation and experiential avoidance in parenting contexts, results have important implications for the prevention and treatment of anxiety within families.