The Influence of Parental Anxious Rearing on Child Depression: The Moderating Effect of Self-Competence

This study explored the relationship between parental anxiety and depression in children, and studied the moderating role of children’s self-competence. Through a series of research tools, the anxious rearing, children’s depression and children’s self-competence are studied respectively. The results show that anxious rearing can significantly predict children’s depression, and self-competence can alleviate this effect.


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Published by SCHOLINK INC. Studies have shown that negative parenting styles are significantly associated with an increase in anxiety and depression symptoms (Zlomke, & Young, 2009). A study in the United States found that adolescents who were controlled and anxiously nurtured by their parents during their childhood reported a higher frequency of symptoms of anxiety and depression. Muris, P. (2002) found that there is a significant relationship between parental anxiety and overprotection and adolescent depression.
Anxious rearing can significantly predict the occurrence of depressive symptoms. Anxious rearing refers to parents worrying about their children's safety, possible dangers and overprotective behaviors (Flett et al., 2002). The perfectionist anxious parenting model believes (Mitchell, Broeren & Newall et al., 2013), the perfectionist tendency of children is their response to the anxious rearing of their parents.
Children who accept this kind of parenting will receive strong attention from their parents and dare not make mistakes, so they become accustomed to becoming self-denying, doubting their value, and eventually developing perfectionist tendencies. Studies have shown that the negative components of perfectionism are negatively related to self-esteem (Yang, Zhu, Zhai, Li, & Li, 2011) and positively related to depression (Liu, Zhu, Deng, Li, & Yang, 2013). The higher the tendency of individual perfectionism, the higher the level of depression. Because they believe that anxious rearing will prompt children to focus on the negative consequences of mistakes and failures, and this failure is beyond the scope of children's ability, so it is difficult for children to get rid of depression.
However, not all children undergoing anxious rearing experience symptoms of depression (Carris, 1998;DeRubeis, 2005;Yang & Clum, 1996). Studies have shown that some people can quickly adapt to emergencies in life and restore normal mental functions within a quick adjustment period (Bonanno, 2004;Rutter, 1993;Wu, 2011). This shows that although children may be affected by parental parenting, there may also be other individual factors that prevent children's depression. Among individual factors, a high level of self-esteem is considered to have an important role in promoting children's mental health. According to the stress-buffering model (Cohen & Wills, 1985), although anxious parenting is a risk factor for development, high self-esteem can be used as a protective factor to reduce depression in children receiving anxious rearing. Diathesis-stress Model believes that individuals who carry a certain "risk" or "vulnerability" gene are more likely to show certain mental illness or behavioral problems when they are disadvantaged (Belsky, 1997). From this perspective, anxious rearing is a risk factor that can exacerbate depression in children with low self-esteem.
Self-esteem, as a value evaluation of oneself, includes two aspects: intrinsic value evaluation and instrumental value evaluation. These two aspects are respectively expressed as self-liking and self-competence. Self-competence means that children show successful behaviors and abilities in activities such as games, sports, learning, and communication, and obtain praise from others for their academic and sports abilities, thereby proving that they are successful and getting a positive experience of self-worth (Yang & Zhang, 2005). A study of senior elementary school students showed that self-competence can significantly predict depression, and enhancing self-competence can prevent children's social anxiety and depression (Hyun & Ha, 2010).
The research of Kenneth and Zhang Xiuge found that children's perfectionism tendency caused by anxious rearing can directly affect depression, but also indirectly affect depression through self-esteem.
On the one hand, when an individual always feels that there is a gap between his actual performance and the standard he wants to achieve, is dissatisfied with his own performance, and cannot accept his own shortcomings and failures, it can directly cause depression; On the other hand, the above-mentioned tendency of the individual can also reduce the overall evaluation of the individual's self-worth, importance, and ability (i.e., self-competence), thereby producing depression.
Therefore, this article aims to explore the impact of parental anxious rearing on children's depression, and to further study the role of self-competence in it. The hypothesis of this study: parental anxiety is related to children's depression. Self-competence can negatively predict children's depression. In addition, self-competence has a moderating effect between anxious rearing and children's depression.

Participants
Using online convenient sampling, 335 middle and high grade primary school students were selected from three primary schools in Huangshi City, Hubei Province. After preliminary screening, 327 valid samples were obtained, including 177 males and 150 females, with an age range of 11.79±3.12 years old.

Research Tools
The tools used in this study include three aspects:

Egna Minnen Beträffende Uppfostran for Children (EMBU-C)
After being revised by Muris et al. (2003), it was revised by Wang Meifang, Niu Hua, and Zhao Xiao (2018) among Chinese elementary school children. After reliability and validity tests, this questionnaire has a good standard validity. The scale reflects the individual's evaluation of parental parenting behavior, which contains a variety of parental parenting attitudes and behaviors, divided into four dimensions, namely emotional warmth, anxious parenting, rejection and overprotection, etc., with a total of 39 items. This article selects the item of parental rejection factor. A 4-point scoring is used (1=never, 4=always). The higher the score, the higher the parental rejection to upbringing. In this study, the Cronbach's α coefficient of EMBU-C is 0.89.

Self-liking/Self-competence Scale-Revised (SLCS-R)
It was revised by Tafarodi R et al. (2001), and Wei Jia et al. (2012) made localized revisions. It has good reliability and validity among Chinese primary school students (Cao & Liu, 2017). The scale reflects an individual's self-esteem level, including two dimensions of self-liking and self-competence, with a total of 16 items. This article selects one of the self-competence factors. A 5-point scoring (1=very inconsistent, 5=very consistent) is adopted. After reverse scoring is performed on the inverse www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/jpbr questions, the higher the total score, the higher the child's self-competence level. The Cronbach's α coefficient in this study is 0.91.

Short Version of Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D 10 )
Compiled by Andresen et al. (1994), Yang Wenhui and Xiong Ge (2016) conducted a reliability and validity test in adolescents and found that the scale has good structural validity, criterion-related validity, discriminative validity, clinical validity and reliability, the internal consistency coefficient used in normal children is 0.70 (Wang, Han, Jiang, & Liu, 2018). The scale reflects the individual's depression level, which contains three factors: positive emotions, depressive emotions, and physical symptoms, with a total of 10 items, such as "I feel lonely" and so on. The scale also adjusted the relevant items of CES-D10 to suit elementary school children, changing the "work" in each item to "learning". 4 points are used for scoring, 0 means no or very few (less than 1 day), 3 means most or all of the time (5-7 days). After scoring positive emotions in reverse, the collected data analysis. The higher the total score, the higher the child's depression level. In this study, the Cronbach's α coefficient is 0.82.

Data Processing
Use SPSS23.0 data processing software package, SPSSau online data processing software and PROCESS2.16.3 plug-in to process the data.

Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive statistics on anxious rearing, depression levels, and self-competence, the results are as follows:

The Moderating Effect of Self-competence between Parents' Anxious Rearing and Children's Depression
Firstly, centralize the data on parents' anxious education and children's self-competence, and secondly put variables into the hierarchical regression model. In Model 1, the direct effect of parental anxiety education on children's depression is analyzed without considering the effect of self-competence, (t=-4.157, p<0.000). This means that parents' anxiety rearing has a significant impact on children's depression; Model 2 adds self-competence as a moderating variable on the basis of the former; Model 3 adds the interactive item of parental anxiety education and self-competence, It can be seen from the

Discussion
This article mainly starts from three perspectives: self-competence, child depression, and anxious rearing, and explores the possible relationship between the three, as well as possible efforts and interventions to reduce the level of children's depression.
Studies have found that parents' anxious rearing behaviors towards boys are more serious, which is consistent with previous studies (Tao, 2013 that they would become talents. Therefore, more anxious parenting methods are used. The self-competence of children increases with the increase of grade, which is consistent with previous studies (Liu, 2005). For children in lower grades, all abilities are still limited, and they are easy to experience their lack of ability in comparison with other broader groups of people, so they show a lower sense of self-competence. As the grade increases, the individual's self-awareness development dimensions and levels become more complicated, and the sense of self-competence also increases.
There are no significant differences in anxious rearing, self-competence, and depression levels between only children and non-only children. This conclusion is significantly different from previous studies.
Previous studies have suggested that the anxious rearing, depression ratio and self-competence level received by only children are higher than those of non-only children. In this study, most non-only-child families have two children. Because of the small number of children and more resources, the family's requirements are usually met. With the development of the national economy, people's living standards are improving. Women can also get the same positive comments and encouragement from many aspects as the only child, so the difference between the only child and the non-only child is gradually shrinking.
Anxious rearing is significantly positively correlated with depression in children. Numerous literatures show that there is a significant correlation between anxious rearing and child depression (Lipps et al., 2012). The internal psychological mechanism is that anxious parenting behaviors will produce more rush, irrational, oppressive and coerced behaviors. These behaviors are not conducive to children's cognitive and behavioral development in many scenarios. When a child is under an anxious parenting condition for a long time, the child will feel strong pressure, and may show anxiety, depression, emotional instability, and poor emotional expression skills. Studies have also shown that the impact of anxious rearing on children's depression is also affected by the children's own personality characteristics or personality temperament, and children with introverted personality may show more depression. Parents of anxious upbringing often present a situation where the child's dangerous situation is too magnified, and this anxiety will be passed on to the child invisibly. A large number of studies have shown that the anxiety between mother and son and between father and son has intergenerational transmission. Anxious rearing parents tend to ignore or reject the needs of the child in the process of interacting with them in order to minimize the potential risk exposure and harm of the child, and the child is more likely to develop depressive emotions and manifestations.
The relationship between children's self-competence and depression is not significant, which is not consistent with previous research results (Huang, 2013). Previous studies have found that the self-competence level of middle school students is significantly negatively correlated with depression, and the level of self-esteem can better predict the occurrence and development of depression. This study did not find a significant relationship between self-competence and child depression, which may be because this effect only occurs in a specific group, and the subject of this study is elementary school students, so there is no significant correlation. At the same time, self-competence is an individual's self-judgment on whether he or she is qualified for study and work, while depression is an emotional or mood state. The two are in different states and positions in the psychological process, Therefore, the relationship between the two may have other mediating variables or moderating variables. For example, the possible intermediary effects of social support networks and friendship quality.
It is generally believed that children's self-competence is a positive psychological quality, while parents' anxious parenting behaviors and children's depression are not conducive to children's mental health. However, some scholars have stated that if the child's social support network and psychological resilience are strong, the parent's anxious parenting behavior may also bring attention and reduce the child's level of depression. Therefore, although parents' anxious parenting behavior will have a negative impact on children in most families, it is after all a manifestation of intimacy and attachment.
Although they are not sure of the degree, they can still affect those societies children who lack structure or other support play a role. This conclusion actually reflects a fact worth paying attention to from the side: children's dependence on their parents is indeed a one-way and unavoidable attachment. No matter how parents behave, children are likely to regard their parents' company as their safest harbor.
In addition, this study also found that self-competence has a moderating effect between anxious rearing and children's depression. Specifically, for children with relatively high self-competence, anxious rearing does not significantly predict children's depression. For children with relatively low levels of self-competence, anxious rearing positively predicts the child's depression level. This study proves that self-competence can regulate the relationship between anxious rearing and children's depression. This conclusion is conducive to screening children who are susceptible to depression, so as to carry out early intervention. By screening out people who have experienced parental anxiety education, when they show low self-competence, they should pay necessary attention, and implement psychological support and psychological intervention for them as soon as possible, which will help prevent the appearance and deterioration of their depressive symptoms. At the same time, it also provides corresponding educational inspiration for school education. When the child is in an anxious upbringing environment, the school can reduce the child's possible depression by improving the child's self-competence or self-esteem.

Conclusion
Anxious rearing is positively correlated with children's depression, and self-competence is negatively correlated with children's depression. Anxious rearing may cause depression in children, but the