Predicting Children’s Anxiety Based on Mothers’ Emotional Adjustment, Alexithymia, and Family Accommodation
Keywords:
Emotional Adjustment, Alexithymia, Family Companionship, Children's AnxietyAbstract
Objective: The present study aimed to predict children’s anxiety based on mothers’ emotional adjustment, alexithymia, and family accommodation.
Methodology: This study employed a descriptive-correlational design. The statistical population consisted of children and adolescents aged 10–18 years living in Gorgan, Iran, in autumn 2025, along with their mothers. A sample of 480 children and their mothers was selected using multi-stage random cluster sampling. Instruments included the Anxiety subscale of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), the Emotional Adjustment subscale of the Bell Adjustment Inventory, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), and the Family Accommodation Scale–Anxiety (FAS-A). Data were analyzed using SPSS-28 through Pearson correlation coefficients and stepwise regression analysis.
Findings: Results indicated a significant negative correlation between mothers’ emotional adjustment and children’s anxiety (r = -0.29, p < .05), a significant positive correlation between mothers’ alexithymia and children’s anxiety (r = 0.61, p < .05), and a significant negative correlation between mothers’ family accommodation and children’s anxiety (r = -0.65, p < .05). Stepwise regression analysis revealed that family accommodation accounted for 42% of the variance in children’s anxiety (F = 108.42, p < .05). With the inclusion of alexithymia in the second step, the explained variance increased to 52% (F = 79.93, p < .001). Emotional adjustment did not enter the final regression model due to shared variance with other predictors.
Conclusion: The findings suggest that higher maternal alexithymia and maladaptive family accommodation are associated with elevated anxiety levels in children, underscoring the importance of addressing maternal emotional characteristics in prevention and intervention programs for childhood anxiety.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Mohammad Ali Malek Shahkoohi, Mohsen Jalali, Elnaz Pourahmadi (Author)
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