(PS3-C75) Emotional Warmth’s Impact on the Relationship Between Parent Stress and Accommodation

Introduction: Accommodation has been strongly linked to youth anxiety (Lebowitz et al., 2013). Accommodation, while perpetuating anxiety in the long run, relieves momentary distress. Therefore, accommodation may be especially difficult for a parent to decrease, especially if the parent themselves is distressed. Multiple studies have supported the link between parent’s psychopathology (e.g., anxiety, depression, distress) and accommodation (Roberts et al., 2020; Flessner et al.,2014; Kerns et al., 2017). Although one found that it was the parent’s perception of the child’s distress that predicted parent’s own accommodation, which may highlight that the relationship is complex (O’Connor et al. 2020). The aim of the current study was to further elucidate the role parental distress may play in parental accommodation by understanding it’s relationship in the context of another parenting style, emotional warmth. Emotional warmth’s role in accommodation and anxious families remains equivocal. However, emotional warmth may interact with parental stress to predict whether parents accommodate or not.

Methods: Parents of youth ages 7-17 (N=526) completed the PAKRS-PR (emotional warmth subscale), the Family Accommodation Scale-Anxiety (total accommodation score), and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (stress subscale; DASS-21).

Results: A simple moderation analysis was utilized to assess whether emotional warmth moderates the relationship between parental stress and accommodation. Emotional warmth did not significantly moderate the relationship, F(1, 522)= 25.97, p=0.45. However, parental stress was significantly related to accommodation, p=0.02.

Discussion: This study affirmed that parental stress is related to parental accommodation. Parental distress, across levels of warmth, predicted accommodation. While this could further affirm the strong relationship between stress and accommodation, future research ought to continue to explore factors which predict accommodation. For example, accommodation presents in multiple different forms, so it is possible that accommodation could present differently in different families (e.g., reassurance giving versus actively fostering avoidance of feared situation).