Can a Parent Cause Anxiety in a Child?

Studies show children are more at risk of depression and anxiety when their parents exhibit signs of aversiveness (harshness, sarcasm, hostility, criticism, or shaming).

Anxiety disorders are a common type of psychiatric disorder characterized by anxiety or fear that does not go away over time. 

A meta-analysis of studies on anxiety found that young people whose parents were less warm, fought more, were over-involved in their children’s lives, or generally “aversive” are at increased risk of depression and anxiety.

Aversiveness includes harshness, meanness, sarcasm, hostility, criticism, punishment, rejecting, or shaming by the parent toward the child, as well as parent-child conflict.

In addition, parents who are stressed and anxious themselves can unintentionally transmit these feelings to their children. Children can be like sponges who pick up emotions from their parents and take them on themselves. 

Other possible causes of anxiety in a child may include: 

• Worry about the future and bad things happening (general anxiety) 
• Extreme fear about a specific thing or situation, such as dogs, insects, or going to the doctor (phobias) 
• Repeated episodes of sudden, unexpected, intense fear that come with symptoms like heart pounding, having trouble breathing, or feeling dizzy, shaky, or sweaty (panic disorder)
• Stressful events
  • Frequently moving or changing schools
  • Parents fighting or arguing
  • The death of someone close to them
  • Serious illness 
  • Injury
  • School-related issues such as tests or bullying
  • Abuse or neglect
• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autistic spectrum disorders
  • Not causes of anxiety, but children with these disorders are more likely to have problems with anxiety 

Some children are simply more anxious as a baseline and less able to cope with stress as a baseline than others.