If anxiety runs in your family, you’ve probably wondered, “did I get this from my mom or dad? Is it in my DNA? And if I have anxiety, will I pass it on to my children?” These are deeply human questions, and science has been working hard to answer them. The short answer is: yes, genetics play a role in our anxiety, but they are far from the whole story. And that turns out to be very good news.
Let’s start with what is clearly established, anxiety disorders do cluster in families. Children of parents with anxiety are significantly more likely to develop anxiety themselves. A population-based family study found that children of parents diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) were between 2 to 2.6 times more likely to also develop GAD compared to children of non-anxious parents, even after accounting for other mental health conditions.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Just because something runs in families doesn’t automatically mean it’s genetic. Families share both DNA and environments, habits, and ways of thinking about the world. Untangling which of these is really responsible has required some clever science.
The most powerful tool researchers use to separate genes from environment is the twin study. Identical twins share 100% of their DNA; fraternal twins share only about 50%, the same as any two siblings. If identical twins are more likely to both have anxiety than fraternal twins, that suggests a genetic component.
And they are, which is why most researchers conclude that anxiety has a heritable component of roughly 30–50%, depending on the type of anxiety and the age group studied. In other words, somewhere between a third and half of a person’s vulnerability to anxiety can be attributed to the genes they inherited. The remaining 50–70% is shaped by life experience, environment, and other factors.
One major 2024 study published in Nature Genetics, the largest of its kind, drawing on data from over 1.2 million participants, identified 51 genetic locations (called “loci”) associated with anxiety disorders, many of them concentrated in brain regions involved in emotion and stress regulation, including the limbic system and cerebral cortex. This landmark work confirmed that anxiety has a real genetic architecture, spread across many genes each contributing a small effect.
Genetics are not the only factor, environment plays a heavy role in anxiety. Here’s where many people are surprised. Some of the most careful studies on parent-to-child anxiety transmission have found that the environment may play a larger role than the genes themselves.
A sophisticated study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry used a “Children of Twins” design, comparing children raised by an anxious parent against children whose twin uncle or aunt (not their actual parent) had anxiety. This design allows researchers to control for genetic relatedness. The finding was striking. The association between parent and child anxiety was largely driven by the environment of being raised by an anxious parent, not by shared genes alone.
How does this happen? Researchers point to several pathways:
First is modeling and observational learning. Children are extraordinarily sensitive observers. When a parent consistently treats the world as threatening or unpredictable, children absorb that message. A child who watches a parent become distressed in traffic, in social situations, or when facing uncertainty learns, implicitly, that these things are dangerous.
Second is parenting style. Overprotective or overcontrolling parenting, which anxious parents are more prone to, understandably, can inadvertently signal to a child that the world is too risky to navigate independently. This can limit the child’s opportunities to build confidence through experience.
Third is information transfer. Anxious parents may also verbally communicate threat, narrating the world in cautious, worst-case terms, without even realizing it.
In short, an anxious parent shapes not only a child’s genes, but their entire emotional learning environment.
One of the most fascinating emerging areas is epigenetics, the study of how environmental experiences can actually change how genes are expressed, without altering the DNA sequence itself.
Research in this field suggests that prolonged stress, even stress experienced before or during pregnancy, can chemically modify certain genes in ways that may influence a child’s stress response system. This means that the transmission of anxiety-related vulnerability from parent to child may not only occur through the genes passed down at conception, but also through biological changes caused by the parent’s own life experiences.
This is a relatively new and evolving area of science, and many questions remain. But it adds yet another layer to the picture: anxiety inheritance is not a simple on/off genetic switch, but a complex, dynamic interplay between biology and experience.
It is also important to understand that no single “anxiety gene” exists. Anxiety is what scientists call a polygenic condition. It is influenced by many hundreds of genetic variants, each contributing a very small amount of risk. Having any one of these variants doesn’t cause anxiety. Rather, it is the cumulative combination of genetic variants alongside life experiences, stress, and circumstance that shapes whether anxiety develops.
This also means genetic risk is not destiny. Many people with a heavy genetic loading for anxiety never develop a disorder. Many people with no family history do. Context, environment, and resilience all matter.
What does this mean for you? If you have anxiety and you’re a parent, or hope to be, there are a few important takeaways.
Getting your own anxiety treated is one of the most protective things you can do for your children. Because much of the transmission appears to be environmental, reducing the ways your anxiety shapes the household environment directly lowers your child’s risk. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is highly effective for anxiety, as are SSRIs and other medications.
Parenting approaches matter. Supporting your child’s independence, allowing them to experience manageable challenges without rescuing them too quickly, and modeling calm responses to stress are all evidence-based protective factors.
Genetic risk is not a sentence. Even children with a strong genetic predisposition to anxiety can and do thrive, particularly when they have warm, supportive environments and access to early intervention if needed.
Anxiety has a real genetic component, likely accounting for around 30–50% of a person’s vulnerability. A landmark 2024 study identified over 50 genetic loci linked to anxiety, concentrated in the brain’s emotion-processing regions. But genes alone do not cause anxiety and the research increasingly shows that the environment created by anxious parents, more than the genes they pass on directly, may be the primary driver of anxiety’s spread through families.
This is genuinely hopeful news. It means that anxiety is not simply a fate written in your DNA. It is a condition shaped by experience, modifiable through treatment, and preventable with the right support.
I’m Jill Giuliano, LCSW. I’m a therapist who practices in my office in Westfield, New Jersey as well as virtually in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Indiana. If you’re struggling with anxiety, email me or give me a call and we’ll get you started on your journey to feel better. I’ve been at this for over 20 years and therapy with a trained professional can change your life.
References
- Friligkou, E., et al. (2024). Gene discovery and biological insights into anxiety disorders from a large-scale multi-ancestry genome-wide association study. Nature Genetics, 56, 2036–2045. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-024-01908-2
- Gottschalk, M. G., & Domschke, K. (2017). Genetics of generalized anxiety disorder and related traits. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 19(2), 159–168. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5573560/
- Eley, T. C., et al. (2015). The intergenerational transmission of anxiety: A children-of-twins study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 172(7), 630–637. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2015.14070818
- Jami, E. S., et al. (2021). Parental characteristics and offspring mental health and related outcomes: A systematic review of genetically informative literature. Translational Psychiatry, 11, 197. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01300-2
- Scaini, S., et al. (2014). Genetic and environmental contributions to social anxiety across different ages: A meta-analytic approach to twin data. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 28(7), 650–656. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2014.07.008
- Lester, K. J., et al. (2019). Anxiety in the family: A genetically informed analysis of transactional associations between mother, father and child anxiety symptoms. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 60(12). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6856374/
- Hovenkamp-Hermelink, J. H. M., et al. (2023). Genetic insights into the neurobiology of anxiety. Trends in Neurosciences, 46(4), 301–312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2023.01.007
- Sawyers, C., et al. (2019). The genetic and environmental structure of fear and anxiety in juvenile twins. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics, 180(3), 204–212. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6414251/
- Meier, S. M., et al. (2025). Heritability and polygenic load for comorbid anxiety and depression. Translational Psychiatry, 15, 89. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-025-03325-3
- Eley, T. C. (2019). 10 things you should know about anxiety and genetics. The EDIT Blog, King’s College London. https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/editlab/2019/05/15/10-things-you-should-know-about-anxiety-and-genetics/
- GoodRx Health. (2023). Can you inherit anxiety? Reviewed by Mera Goodman, MD. https://www.goodrx.com/health-topic/anxiety-disorders/is-anxiety-genetic-or-hereditary
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or psychological advice. If you are experiencing symptoms of anxiety, please consult a qualified mental health professional.
