Anxious about your math test? Parents may be partly to blame

If the thought of a math test makes you break out in a cold sweat, your parents may be partly to blame, a new study suggests.
Researchers led by University of Chicago psychologists found that children of math-anxious parents learned less math over the school year and were more likely to be math-anxious themselves - but only when these parents provided frequent help on the child's math homework.
The study is the first to establish a link between parents' and children's math anxiety.
"We often don't think about how important parents' own attitudes are in determining their children's academic achievement," said UChicago psychologist Sian Beilock.

"But our work suggests that if a parent is walking around saying 'Oh, I don't like math' or 'This stuff makes me nervous,' kids pick up on this messaging and it affects their success," said Beilock.
"Math-anxious parents may be less effective in explaining math concepts to children, and may not respond well when children make a mistake or solve a problem in a novel way," added Susan Levine, the Rebecca Anne Boylan Professor of Education and Society in Psychology.

Four hundred and thirty-eight first- and second-grade students and their primary caregivers participated in the study. Children were assessed in math achievement and math anxiety at both the beginning and end of the school year.

As a control, the team also assessed reading achievement, which they found was not related to parents' math anxiety.
Parents completed a questionnaire about their own nervousness and anxiety around math and how often they helped their children with math homework.
The researchers believe the link between parents' math anxiety and children's math performance stems more from math attitudes than genetics.
"Although it is possible that there is a genetic component to math anxiety the fact that parents' math anxiety negatively affected children only when they frequently helped them with math homework points to the need for interventions focused on both decreasing parents' math anxiety and scaffolding their skills in homework help," researchers said.

The study appears in the journal Psychological Science.