There have been many studies that have explored parenting styles and parental psychological health, but in the majority of these studies the focus has been on the mom’s health. A new study includes both mothers and fathers in assessing the relationship between adult children’s memories of their parent’s parenting practices and current anxiety symptoms.

Two hundred college students participated in the study and results showed that for both female and male adult children, memories of mom’s who were more controlling in their parenting correlated with greater adult anxiety.   Additionally, adult children who felt like their parents were not accepting of them (when they were kids) related to higher levels of anxiety as adults.  When the results were analyzed separately, the relationship among maternal control and paternal acceptance and adult child anxiety, was greater for adult female children than for adult male children. Only maternal anxiety was associated with adult child anxiety.

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