The Relationship Between Maternal Overprotectiveness in Iranian Cultural and Anxious Beliefs with Child Anxiety: Mediating Role of Positive and Negative Affect

he main purpose of this study was to study the relationships between maternal over-protection in Iranian culture, mother's anxious beliefs and child anxiety via mediating role of mother positive and negative affect. The statistical population included all mothers of two to four years old child inhabitants in Urmia and Tabriz in 2021-22 who referred to "Aramesh Andisheshe" and "Aramesh" consultant centers in Urmia and Tabriz respectively. The research sample embraced 225 mothers with their children whom were selected by convenient sampling process. The research method was correlational of path analysis procedure. To collect data Roth Manual of Mother-Child Relationship Evaluation (1961), Spence et al Preschool Anxiety Scale (2001), Francis and Chorpita Parental Beliefs about Anxiety (2010) and Watson et al Positive and Negative Affect Scale (1988) were implemented. Pearson coefficient and path analysis with SPSS and Amos was applied as main statistical procedure to analyze data. The results revealed that there was significant relationship between maternal anxious beliefs, positive and negative affect with child anxiety. Maternal over-protection and anxious beliefs with child anxiety via mediating role of positive and negative affect were also significantly correlated (p<0/001). The model also had optimal goodness of fit. Concerning the findings, the mothers' psychological characteristics in Iranian culture and culture oriented parenting styles was effective on child anxiety.