Within a family, anxiety disorders are more likely to be passed down from mother to daughter and father to son.
- Many children who develop an anxiety disorder refuse to go to school, may suffer from separation anxiety, social anxiety or panic disorder.
- The likelihood of children suffering from an anxiety disorder in their lifetime was almost three times higher when a parent of the same sex had anxiety.
“Although anxiety is known to run in families, the relative contribution of genes and environment is unclear. (…) The association of parental and offspring sex with transmission anxiety disorders has not been studied before”, said researchers from Dalhousie University (Canada). That’s why they decided to do a study to examine whether the transmission of anxiety from parents to children was gender-specific.
Transmission according to gender
For the purposes of this work, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the scientists recruited, from February 1, 2013 to January 31, 2020, 398 children (203 girls aged approximately 11 and 195 boys aged 10) conceived by 221 mothers and 237 fathers. The team conducted interviews to establish diagnoses of anxiety disorders in the parents and their offspring.
According to the results, anxiety in the same-sex parent was associated with increased rates of anxiety disorders in the child, whereas anxiety disorders in the opposite-sex parent were not. Clearly, mothers were more likely than fathers to pass on their anxiety to their daughters. As for fathers, they were more likely to pass on their anxiety disorders to their sons.
“Environmental Factors”
According to research, sharing a household with a non-anxious same-sex parent was associated with lower rates of anxiety in offspring, but the presence of a non-anxious opposite-sex parent was not. not.
“This finding suggests a possible role of environmental factors, such as learning, in transmitting anxiety from parents to children. Future studies should establish whether treating parents’ anxiety can protect their children from developing an anxiety disorder, concluded the scientists.
