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

Validity of the Finnish version of the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA)

“…In the present study, symptoms of parental burnout were more typical for mothers than fathers, whereas no mean level differences were found in the levels of parental burnout between highly educated and lower educated parents (see also, Sorkkila & Aunola, 2020). These results were in accordance with previous findings showing that the symptoms of parental burnout are to some extent dependent on parent’s gender but not on parental education (Mikolajczak, Raes et al ., 2018; Roskam et al ., 2018; Sorkkila & Aunola, 2020). Higher burnout levels of mothers compared to those of fathers may reflect the fact that mothers are generally more involved in children’s care and upbringing than fathers are (Mikolajczak, Raes et al ., 2018) and, thus, more prone to prolonged stress related on parenting.…”

“…Due to its history, free access, and good psychometric properties, the PBA can be considered a good candidate to represent the gold standard for assessing parental burnout (Roskam et al ., 2018). However, the questionnaire has thus far mainly been used among French‐ and English‐speaking parents (e.g., Mikolajczak, Raes et al , 2018; Mikolajczak & Roskam, 2018; Roskam et al ., 2018), and its validity and reliability in other cultural contexts and languages is unknown. Because it is possible that there is cross‐cultural variation in the structure and expression of parental burnout, examination of the validity and reliability of the PBA in different cultural contexts and languages is warranted.…”

Risk Factors for Parental Burnout among Finnish Parents: The Role of Socially Prescribed Perfectionism

“…Although parents have been shown to be both harsh on themselves and experience pressure in their parenting from other people (Douglas and Michaels 2004;Hagger 2011), the relationship between parental burnout and multidimensional perfectionism has so far not been investigated. Furthermore, studies including both family background and children's characteristics, as well as parental personality factors as predictors of parental burnout are rare (Kawamoto et al 2018;Mikolajczak et al 2018b).…”

“…Several family background factors can be considered to act as risk factors for parental burnout (see Mikolajczak et al 2018b), such as having many children (large families may increase parental demands) (Lundberg et al 1994), having young children (younger children need more looking after than older children do), having a small age gap between children (requiring more parental investment), being female (mothers tend to be more involved in childcare than fathers) (Lindhal-Norberg 2007), being a single parent (single parents may not be able to share chores or responsibilities with anyone), having a blended family (parents may have authority issues or other difficulties with stepchildren) (Baxter et al 2004), low financial resources of the family (parents with lower income suffer from additional money-related stress, and they may not be able to afford additional services such as babysitting), parental unemployment (being unemployed may cause additional stress and affect self-esteem), or having a child with special needs (such children require extra attention and care) (Blanchard et al 2006;Mikolajczak et al 2018b). However, a recent study of Belgian parents revealed that sociodemographic factors explained less variance in parental burnout than particularities of the child, parents' personality traits, parenting factors, and family functioning (Mikolajczak et al 2018b). In the study, the only sociodemographic factor that was a significant contributor to parental burnout was having a child under the age of five.…”

Determination of Perceived Social Support and Burnout Levels of Mothers of Children with Intellectual Disability

“…Improving marital satisfaction, co-parenting and parenting practices would reduce parental burnout. Hence, in cases where the child also suffers from a chronic disease, it may therefore be of particular importance for healthcare practitioners to emphasise the importance of shared parental responsibility to prevent stress and burnout in mothers (32).…”