The Influence Of Parenting Style On Children’s Anxiety:the Mediating Role Of Emotion Regulation

Anxiety is a complex emotional state for children with restlessness, anxiety, worry and other unpleasant intense when danger or threat situations arise. As an emotional problem, anxiety has three features in children’s psychological development. Moderate anxiety can be regarded as a normal phenomenon. But generalized anxieties, which may cause anxiety disorders, are considered abnormal and affect physical and mental health. It is not conducive to development of children’s emotional, social and intellectual. The reason of child anxiety is multifaceted. It can generally be divided into internal and external factors. Research shows that parenting style associated with children anxiety. Parenting style probably is the most an important external factor in children anxiety. Emotion regulation refers to the emotional situation of children that influence on the expression of emotions, experience and process. Research has found that children’s emotion regulation associated with children anxiety, which may be the major internal factor of children anxiety. However, domestic and foreign research on mechanisms is not clear about parenting style and emotional regulation interaction with children anxiety.This study uses cross-sectional design to investigate163students from Grade5-6of a primary school in Xi’an sampled by random with questionnaire about the Parenting style by Steinberg et al (1992), Gross Emotion Regulation Checklist (in Chinese)and Chinese version of Spence Anxiety Scale for Children. The total number of valid return was142. On this basis, this research has drawn the following conclusions.(1) The difference of children’s anxiety levels in terms of gender was not obvious; But in terms of age and grade is that the older and higher grade has low children’s anxiety levels.(2) In terms of emotion regulation, emotion regulation ability for girls is better than boys; Children’s emotion regulation ability increases with age and grade.(3) Parenting styles has differences in Gender. Girl is higher than boy in the level of acceptance/involvement. Compared to grade five, children in grades six is higher than in the level of severe/supervision.(4) There is a significant negative correlation between inhibition of expression and children anxiety level.The higher inhibition of expression makes lower anxiety level; It has a significant negative correlation between children anxiety and severe/supervision, accept/participate of parenting style. The higher severe/supervision, accept/participate of parenting style makes lower anxiety level;(5) There is a significant positive correlation between expression of emotion regulation and severe/supervision, accept/participate of parenting style which shows children’s emotion regulation ability increases with degree of severe/supervision, accept/participate of parenting style.(6) It found that children emotion regulation has significantly predicted level of anxiety.(7) Children emotional regulation has partially mediator effect on parenting style and children anxiety.