Associations between parental autonomy granting and adolescent anxiety in a longitudinal adoption study

Skoler, Emma R.

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Associations between parental autonomy granting and adolescent anxiety in a longitudinal adoption study Público Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/765373062

Abstract

Parental autonomy granting throughout youth may play an important role in the presence of adolescent anxiety disorders. Literature and the popular press have suggested that an increase in adolescent anxiety can be directly attributed to lower levels of parental autonomy granting. However, whether these associations are due to potential confounds is still unclear. The present study addresses whether the association between parental autonomy granting and adolescent anxiety is due to environmental mediation versus gene–environment correlation (rGE) utilizing data from the Colorado Adoption Project (CAP) (320 adoptive parents, 376 biological parents, 300 adoptive offspring, 390 biological offspring). A model with a single latent variable with loadings on autonomy granting assessed at eight timepoints throughout childhood and early adolescence fit well. Results indicated that autonomy granting was not significantly associated with either clinical interview GAD symptoms or parent-reported anxiety, although associations between GAD and autonomy granting in biological and adoptive offspring did differ significantly. Together, these results provide little evidence for either environmental mediation or passive rGE, though additional data coding is still underway. We also examined evidence for evocative rGE in the context of autonomy granting. Although autonomy granting was more similar across biological sibling pairs than adoptive sibling pairs, which would indicate evocative rGE, this difference was not significant.

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