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Youth Anxiety: The Moderating Effects of Accommodation and Emotional Warmth

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Abstract

Parental accommodation (i.e., modifying behavior to reduce child distress) is among the most empirically supported anxiety enhancing parenting practices; while emotional warmth (i.e., support and affection) has demonstrated a less clear link to anxiety. The current study aims to explore the interactive nature of emotional warmth within the context of accommodation. We hypothesized that accommodation would moderate the relationship between emotional warmth and anxiety. The sample included parents of youth (N = 526) ages 7–17. A simple moderation analysis was conducted. Accommodation significantly moderated the relationship [B = 0.03, C.I. (0.01, 0.05), p = 0.01]. Additional variance was accounted for by adding the interaction term to the model (R2 = 0.47, p < 0.001). At high levels of accommodation, emotional warmth significantly predicted child anxiety symptoms. This study affirms that emotional warmth is significantly related to anxiety in the context of high accommodation. Future work ought to build upon these findings to explore these relationships. Limitations of the study include sampling and parent-report data.

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This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, Kent State University, Kent, OH, United States of America

    Theresa R. Gladstone, Emily P. Wilton, Sydney D. Biscarri Clark, Ashley A. Lahoud & Christopher A. Flessner

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  1. Theresa R. Gladstone
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  2. Emily P. Wilton
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  3. Sydney D. Biscarri Clark
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  4. Ashley A. Lahoud
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  5. Christopher A. Flessner
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Contributions

Theresa Gladstone was primarily responsible for conception and writing manuscript’s initial draft. Christopher Flessner supported study conception and design. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Theresa R. Gladstone.

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Competing Interests

Christopher Flessner receives royalties from Guilford Press.

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 study was approved by Kent State University’s Institutional Review Board as part of a larger study. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants including in the study.

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Gladstone, T.R., Wilton, E.P., Biscarri Clark, S.D. et al. Youth Anxiety: The Moderating Effects of Accommodation and Emotional Warmth. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-023-01544-7

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