| Children are born with fears that protect them against danger. Yet instinctive fears may undermine confidence and learning. Confronted with novel and potentially dangerous stimuli, newborns rely on their parents for clues on whether the situation is an opportunity or danger and thus should be approached or avoided. If parents are fearful themselves, they will show signals that may enhance child fear. From an evolutionary perspective, fathers have specialized in external environments (confronting dangerous animals, fighting strangers, exploring new territory) while mothers specialized in the internal environment (feeding and comforting the child). Given this evolutionary-based comparative advantage of fathers, infants may overvalue the signal of their father compared to their mother to decide whether the external environment represents threat or opportunity. First, a series of experiments is proposed in which children are confronted with novel and potentially dangerous situations, and parents? response is manipulated as fearful or confident in order to make causal inferences on how paternal versus maternal signals may differentially affect child anxiety. A comparative paternal advantage is tested across a variety of external domains (height, animals, territory, strangers) and child ages. For example, babies have to cross a visual cliff, while being encouraged by either their father or mother, who was previously exposed to either a video of a falling baby, or a neutral video. Second, children who have been followed from their birth until the age of 2,5 in a longitudinal study will be further tested at the age of 4,5 and 7 to examine the longer-term effect of their fathers? and mothers? anxiety disorders and parenting on their offspring?s anxiety disorders. Third, a meta-analysis will be conducted to establish the relative impact of fathers versus mothers on child anxiety, and the moderators involved. Fathers have been ignored in research and treatment of child anxiety. The theory of a dominant paternal role in the aetiology and coping with childhood fears, is highly innovative and provocative, and has important scientific, clinical and societal implications. |
