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. 2014 Jul;35(4):265-272.
doi: 10.1016/j.appdev.2014.04.006.

Paternal Autonomy Restriction, Neighborhood Safety, and Child Anxiety Trajectory in Community Youth

Christine E Cooper-Vince  1 , Priscilla T Chan  1 , Donna B Pincus  1 , Jonathan S Comer  2
Affiliations

Paternal Autonomy Restriction, Neighborhood Safety, and Child Anxiety Trajectory in Community Youth

Christine E Cooper-Vince et al. J Appl Dev Psychol. 2014 Jul.

Abstract

Intrusive parenting, primarily examined among middle to upper-middle class mothers, has been positively associated with the presence and severity of anxiety in children. This study employed cross-sectional linear regression and longitudinal latent growth curve analyses to evaluate the main and interactive effects of early childhood paternal autonomy restriction (AR) and neighborhood safety (NS) on the trajectory of child anxiety in a sample of 596 community children and fathers from the NICHD SECYD. Longitudinal analyses revealed that greater paternal AR at age 6 was actually associated with greater decreases in child anxiety in later childhood. Cross-sectional analyses revealed main effects for NS across childhood, and interactive effects of paternal AR and NS that were present only in early childhood, whereby children living in safer neighborhoods demonstrated increased anxiety when experiencing lower levels of paternal AR. Findings further clarify for whom and when paternal AR impacts child anxiety in community youth.

Keywords: autonomy; child anxiety; father; latent growth modeling; neighborhood safety.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Conditional LGM for neighborhood safety and paternal autonomy restriction. * = p < .05, ** = p < .01, *** = p < .001 AR = paternal autonomy restriction; NS = neighborhood safety
Figure 2
Figure 2
Development of child anxiety from age 6 to age 15 as a function of paternal autonomy restriction.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mean child anxiety at age 6 as a function of neighborhood safety and paternal autonomy restriction.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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