Anxiety Transmission within the Mother-Daughter Relationship: A Phenomenological Qualitative Study

Abstract

For children of parents who exhibit symptoms of anxiety, the long-term effects of anxiety on their upbringing can be significant and enduring. Maternal anxiety can adversely impact children’s ability to cope with uncertainty through the modeling of anxious interpretations of ambiguity. The purpose of this qualitative transcendental phenomenological study is to explore how the experiences of being raised by a mother who exhibits symptoms of anxiety affected subsequent anxiety symptomatology for adult daughters. Principles from Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory of Social Referencing served as the conceptual framework for this study. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and analyzed to determine emergent themes. In addition to contributing to family and child counseling literature, this study can provide information that can help adult daughters of mothers with anxiety understand how their early experiences may have influenced their current anxious thoughts and feelings. The study findings may also be useful to clinicians in fostering more healthy thinking and coping in their female clients who are growing up in homes where anxious affect, cognitions, and behavior are modeled. Keywords: anxiety, mother, daughters, family, parenting, information processing biases, social referencing