Neighborhood Risk Influences Childhood Anxiety Symptoms for Low Fear Children through Maternal Intrusiveness

Introduction

There are many risk factors for anxiety in childhood. Fearfulness (Buss,2011) and neighborhood risk are associated with increased anxiety (Cooley-Quille et al.,2001). Maternal intrusiveness is associated with both fearfulness and neighborhood risks (Kiel et al.,2015; Cuellar et al.,2015) and is also a risk for anxiety (Putnam et al.,2002). Previous work has shown that parenting mediates the link between neighborhood risks and child outcomes (Herberle et al.,2014) and that fearful temperament might moderate associations between neighborhood risk and internalizing symptoms, such that less fearful children are most impacted by neighborhood characteristics (Bush et al.,2010). We hypothesized that the relation between neighborhood risk and anxiety is mediated through maternal intrusiveness, and that this mediation is moderated by child fearful temperament, such that children low in fear will be at greatest risk for anxiety.

Method

A sample of 206 children and families (50% female; 59% African American; 50% above federal poverty threshold) from a longitudinal study conducted in the southeastern region of the United States was used for the current report. Mothers reported income and infant race/ethnicity across visits. Mothers completed perceived neighborhood risk and disorder questionnaires (e.g.,I worry about guns and knives in my neighborhood) at 6-months. Mothers and children completed a puzzle task and mothers’ intrusiveness was coded on a scale of 1-(not intrusive) to 7-(highly intrusive) at 24-and 36-months. Concurrently, mothers completed the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire and the Child Behavior Questionnaire, which measures child fearful temperament. Mothers completed the Child Behavior Checklist, including an anxiety symptoms scale (e.g.,My child is too fearful/anxious) at 60-months.

Results

We tested a structural equation model in MPlus 7.4 (Muthen & Muthen,2012). The overall model fit was good, RMSEA=0.07, CFI=0.965, X²=0.107, AIC=4264.71. Neighborhood risk was significantly associated with anxiety, b= 0.23,p=0.011, and intrusiveness, b= 0.179,p=0.001. Intrusiveness was significantly related to anxiety, b=0.350,p=0.017. Consistent with hypotheses, maternal intrusiveness partially mediated the association of neighborhood risk with anxiety, b=0.062,p=0.054 and the interaction between intrusiveness and fearful temperament was significant b=-0.143,p=0.028. Simple slopes analyses showed that intrusiveness was related to anxiety for low fear children.

Discussion

The findings presented here may have important implications for understanding early anxiety prevention in different contexts. The results suggest that when neighborhood risk is high, less fearful children who might otherwise be considered at low risk for anxiety could still develop symptoms. Furthermore, this work highlights the importance of supporting parents in order to reduce anxiety risk in their children.