To investigated the influencing factors of children′s dental fear (DF) and anxiety and its correlation with parenting styles.

A total of 357 children (aged 4 to 12) and their parents admitted to Department of Paediatric Dentistry, School and Hospital of Stomatology, China Medical University from March to November in 2018. After obtaining consent, a questionnaire survey was conducted. General demographic questionnaire was used to investigate the demographic sociological data of parents and children. For the parents, the Chinese version of the parenting style questionnaire was used; for children, the Chinese face version of the modified child dental anxiety scale was used. The investigator instructed the children to fill in according to the facial expression. SPSS 20.0 software was used for data analysis. Frequency, rate and component ratio were used for descriptive statistical analysis. Chi-square test was used to analyze the influence of different factors on children′s DF. Pearson correlation was used to explore the relationship between parenting style and children′s DF. Multiple linear regression was used to find out the influencing factors of children′s DF.

A total of 400 questionnaires were sent out and 357 valid questionnaires were collected, with effective recovery of 89.25%. There were 168 boys (DF = 74) and 189 girls (DF = 90), the incidence of DF was 45.94%. Correlation analysis showed that there was no correlation between paternal parenting style and DF (P>0.05). The dimensions of maternal parenting rejection (r = 0.18, 95% CI = 0.023 ~ 0.318, P = 0.003) and overprotection (r = 0.27, 95% CI = 0.138 ~ 0.392, P<0.001) were positively correlated with children′s DF, while the dimensions of emotional warmth (r = -0.12, 95% CI = -0.238 ~ 0.016, P = 0.048) were negatively correlated with children′s DF. Multiple linear regression analysis found that whether the caregiver had fear (95% CI = -2.685 ~ -0.889, P<0.001), whether the caregiver was concerned about oral health (95% CI = 1.078 ~ 3.544, P<0.001), how many times has the child visited a dentist (95% CI = 0.840 ~ 4.831, P = 0.005), who was the primary caregiver (95% CI = -4.897 ~ -0.732, P = 0.008), the age of parents (95% CI = 0.031 ~ 0.402, P = 0.022) and children (95% CI = -0.859 ~ -0.108, P = 0.012) and maternal overprotection (95% CI = 0.039 ~ 0.570, P = 0.025) entered the regression equation.

The various influencing factors of children′s DF were complicated. In addition to the age of the children and the number of dental visits, who was the primary caregiver, the caregiver′s age, their dental fear, and the degree of attention to oral health were the affecting factors of children′s DF. And at the same time, clinical attention should be paid to the influence of maternal parenting style on DF, which advocates emotional warmth rather than rejection and overprotection.