For example, it could be that parenting a child expressing symptoms of anxiety leads a parent to inhibit the amount of challenging behaviour they engage in with their child. Second, although the main focus of this present study was on the father– child relationship, a limitation in interpreting the current findings is the shared method variance from mothers.
As mentioned, this study was part of a larger RCT, where additional maternal characteristics were of interest.
Consequently, diagnostic interviews and surveys regarding child anxiety were conducted solely with the child's mother.
As this is the first study to display these findings for mothers, these results need to be replicated, and with different modes of measurement so as to explore the mechanisms that might drive this association for mothers. For example, both mothers and fathers could report on their child's anxiety.
Further, mothers could report on their own, as well as fathers' challenging parenting behaviour and vice versa (Bögels and van Melick, 2004).
Finally, as previously mentioned, a comparison between observational as opposed to self-report measurement for challenging parenting behaviour is required and future research may wish to explore the specific sub-types of challenging parenting behaviour (e.g. rough-and-tumble play, risk-taking) which may be of greater relevance for fathers. Although these various limitations could not be addressed in the present study, they present varied and exciting avenues for future research.