Paternal Overprotectiveness

The paternal role was the most influential for anxiety. Paternal overprotectiveness had a stronger influence on children’s anxiety (Bögels, 2011) because this overprotectiveness is more compatible with the maternal role than the paternal. Challenging parenting would fit best into the role of the father or male guardian. This would explain why paternal overprotectiveness is not compatible with paternal anxiety, since the classic male role is the instrumental role. The instrumental role is the exact opposite of the anxious parenting role as it’s defined by being assertive and independent (Majdandžić et al., 2014). It follows that challenging parenting ,when shown by the paternal figure, is positive. It reduces

The same challenging behaviour, when found exhibited by mothers, seemed to increase instead of decrease anxiety (Lazarus et. Al, 2015). One of the explanations for this could be the adherence ,or lack thereof, to the assigned gender role. Mothers are expected to possess expressive characteristics, opposed to father’s instrumental characteristics. Challenging behaviour is characterised by encouragement of individuality and assertiveness, which aligns with instrumental, not expressive behaviour. Thus the lack of adherence to the maternal gender role may be a cause for this anxiety . Leaving behind the challenging parenting, anxious parenting also had quite an effect on children’s anxiety. Anxious parenting was found to be a source of anxiety increase when fathers exhibited this behaviour (Bögels,2011). The paternal instrumental role doesn’t combine well with the anxious parenting characteristics; they are almost complete opposites. Being emotional and on edge does not go well with being assertive. This contradiction may be a main cause of

Anxiety in the parents itself can be a cause of anxious parenting. Although this can also be brought back to the fact that having anxiety is considered more acceptable for women due to gender roles. the expressive female role allows women to behave more emotionally. Another explanation for this anxious parenting could be that the parents are reaction to the already existing anxiety of the child. They may notice that their child is a little shy and adapt their parenting according to this. To conclude anything about definite causes, more research in this specific area should be conducted. . Unfortunately, the studies used in this review paper contained some limitations as well. In one study it was not possible to lay out the cause and effect due to the study design. An additional problem in this study was that some results from different studies could not be compared due to differing measuring methods(Lazarus, R. S., Dodd, H.