Research shows that anxiety disorders are passed down from mother to daughter and that having a father who is not anxious protects sons from developing the condition.
Researchers looked at the role of nature versus nurture in the development of anxiety in a group of children who had participated in a study focused on families at risk for mood disorders.
If genetics played a bigger role, children of both sexes would have the same rate of anxiety disorders regardless of whether the parents were male or female.
A pattern of transmission from mother to daughter and father to son would be expected if children were developing anxiety disorders because they were learning from a same-sex parent.
At least to an extent, the latter is what the researchers discovered.
Kids who had a same-sex parent with an anxiety disorder were three times more likely to develop the same condition than their peers. We don't know if the study included children or adults.
A mother's anxiety disorder was found to increase her daughter's risk of being diagnosed with an anxiety condition.
If their father didn't have an anxiety disorder, the son's risk of developing one wouldn't go up.
Having a same-sex parent without an anxiety condition was not as protective as having an opposite-sex parent without one.
The study was observational and retrospective, so it was not able to show cause and effect.
The researchers wrote that it would be hard to say which direction it was operating because of the two-way feedback loop.
It may be possible to prevent the intergenerational transmission of anxiety disorders if parents are treated for their anxiety.
Children pick up anxiety from their parents, according to previous research.
An experiment where parents were randomly told to act calmly while a child was about to take a spelling test showed that kids mirrored that attitude.
A higher chance of anxiety disorders in children of parents with anxiety disorders.
The paper was published in an open access journal.
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