Exhausted Parents: Sociodemographic, Child-Related, Parent-Related, Parenting and Family-Functioning Correlates of Parental Burnout

Parental burnout is a specific syndrome resulting from enduring exposure to chronic parenting stress. It encompasses three dimensions: an overwhelming exhaustion related to one’s parental role, an emotional distancing with one’s children and a sense of ineffectiveness in one’s parental role. This st...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of child and family studies 2018-02, Vol.27 (2), p.602-614
Main Authors: Mikolajczak, Moïra, Raes, Marie-Emilie, Avalosse, Hervé, Roskam, Isabelle
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Burnout
Child and School Psychology
Child Rearing
Children
Family (Sociological Unit)
Fatigue
Original Paper
Parent Role
Parental stress
Parents & parenting
Prevention programs
Psychology
Risk factors
Social Sciences
Sociodemographics
Sociology
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Summary:Parental burnout is a specific syndrome resulting from enduring exposure to chronic parenting stress. It encompasses three dimensions: an overwhelming exhaustion related to one’s parental role, an emotional distancing with one’s children and a sense of ineffectiveness in one’s parental role. This study aims to facilitate further identification of antecedents/risk factors for parental burnout in order to inform prevention and intervention practices. In a sample of 1723 french-speaking parents, we examined the relationship between parental burnout and 38 factors belonging to five categories: sociodemographics, particularities of the child, stable traits of the parent, parenting and family-functioning. In 862 parents, we first examined how far these theoretically relevant risk factors correlate with burnout. We then examined their relative weight in predicting burnout and the amount of total explained variance. We kept only the significant factors to draw a preliminary model of risk factors for burnout and tested this model on another sample of 861 parents. The results suggested that parental burnout is a multi-determined syndrome mainly predicted by three sets of factors: parent’s stable traits, parenting and family-functioning.
ISSN:1062-1024
1573-2843
DOI:10.1007/s10826-017-0892-4