Anxiety-Promoting Parenting Behaviors in Adolescents with Social Anxiety: Controlled with a Non-Clinical Sample

BACKGROUND: : The majority of research on parenting behaviors in social phobia has been conducted with mother–child dyads, but there is still a gap in current knowledge about the role of fathers’ parenting behaviors and adolescence period. This study focuses on the role of parent gender, parental attitudes, and familial factors in an adolescent population. METHODS: Our study sample consisted of adolescents diagnosed with social phobia (n = 60), healthy non-clinical adolescents (n = 30), and the parents of adolescents with social phobia (n = 46) and non-clinical adolescents (n = 30). A Sociodemographic Information Form, Family Interview Inventory, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, and The Parent Attitude Research Instrument were administered to all groups. RESULTS: The parents of adolescents with social phobia have reported a higher overprotective mothering attitude when compared to parents of healthy adolescents (P (mother) < .001 and P (father) = .009). The mothers’ overprotective parenting style and the fathers’ avoidance levels were found as predictive factors for adolescents’ social phobia in logistic regression analysis (respectively; exp(β) = 0.868 and P = .002; exp(β) = 0.927 and P = .017). CONCLUSION: Our results indicate the necessity of considering both the parents in the research. We suggest that controlled prospective future studies on different ages, diagnostic groups, and cultures, which will take the gender of both parents and patients into account, may reveal important data on the relation between parenting behaviors and social anxiety.