Gender Differences in the Mitigating Effect of Co-Parenting on Parental Burnout: The Gender Dimension Applied to COVID-19 Restrictions and Parental Burnout Levels

Abstract

Parenting is recognized as a complex and stressful activity, which in recent years has been linked to the potential development of parental burnout among mothers and fathers. With the spread of COVID-19 around the globe, not only have situations of health emergency and economic difficulty emerged, but also tremendous impacts on individual lives and family role divisions, which continue to be experienced today. As lockdown measures have affected unemployment rates, financial insecurity levels, social support, amount of leisure time, and the number of caring responsibilities, parents are expected to be at higher risk for developing parental burnout. Co-parenting is presented as a factor which can mitigate the effect between COVID-19 lockdown measures and the levels of experienced parental burnout. Nevertheless, we argue that the role of co-parenting in association with the implications of COVID-19 on parental stress differs between men and women. As parenthood remains an activity that is largely gender-based, co-parenting is hypothesized to be of more crucial importance in attenuating the effect between COVID-19 lockdown measures and parental burnout for fathers in comparison to mothers. Our results confirm previous findings that COVID-19 has increased levels of parental burnout. The relationship between state-imposed COVID-19 lockdown measures and levels of parental burnout was not found to be significantly affected by co-parenting. However, when assessing this two-way interaction separately for men and women, we saw that this mitigating effect was significant for fathers and non-significant for mothers.

Parental Burnout During the Second Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring the Role of Parenting Stressors and Coparenting Support

“…Although previous studies have found coparenting support protected against parental burnout ( Mikolajczak & Roskam, 2018 ), findings on parenting during the COVID-19 pandemic were mixed. For example, in a study conducted by Bastiaansen et al (2021) the relationship between pandemic restrictions and parental burnout was not impacted by coparenting in general. However, coparenting did mitigate the impact of the restrictions on parental burnout among fathers.…”

“…This finding is consistent with BR 2 and supports previous findings demonstrating coparenting support is a protective factor against parental burnout ( Mikolajczak & Roskam, 2018 ). Few studies have explored the effect of coparenting support on parental burnout ( Bastiaansen et al, 2021 ), and even less is known regarding the effect of coparenting support on parental burnout during COVID-19. Thus, the current finding is important in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…However, few studies have provided empirical evidence for the association between coparenting support and parental burnout, and even fewer studies have examined this relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic. In one of the few studies examining this relationship during the pandemic, Bastiaansen et al (2021) found cooperative coparenting buffered the effect of COVID-19 lockdown measures on parental burnout for fathers but not for mothers. Furthermore, Favez et al (2022) found negative coparenting behaviors that exposed children to interparental conflict were associated with higher levels of parental burnout; however, endorsing the other partner's parenting was associated with lower parental burnout.…”

“…For 5–20% of parents, chronic or intense stress may lead to parental burnout ( Roskam et al., 2018 ; Séjourné et al, 2018 ), which can have wide-ranging consequences for parents, including substance use, somatic symptoms, hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis dysregulation as well as suicidal and escape ideations ( Brianda et al, 2020a , 2020b ; Mikolajczak et al, 2018a , 2019 ). Research on parental burnout is rapidly growing ( Mikolajczak et al, 2019 ), and studies suggest parents experienced an increased risk for burnout during the pandemic ( Bastiaansen et al, 2021 ; Griffith, 2020 ; van Bakel et al, in press ), as well as the negative outcomes associated with parental burnout. Due to the impact parental burnout can have on parental mental and physical health ( Brianda et al, 2020b ; Mikolajczak et al, 2019 ), parenting behaviors ( Mikolajczak et al, 2019 ), and child well-being ( Brianda et al, 2020a ; Mikolajczak et al, 2018a , 2019 ), it is important to examine the risk and protective factors associated with parental burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

How do Internet moms raise children? The reshaping of Chinese urban women’s parenting psychology by COVID-19 online practices

“…Managing the parent–child and family relationships during the pandemic is not only a family issue but also a social issue. There are numerous new perspectives for analyzing family social relations during the pandemic, which have included focusing on parenting stress in young parents ( Adams et al, 2021 ), parenting styles and parent–child relationships ( Chung et al, 2020 ), differences in parenting attitudes ( Forbes et al, 2021 ), parental psychological flexibility ( Gould et al, 2020 ), and the relationship between parenting and parental burnout ( Bastiaansen et al, 2021 ). For the underprivileged group of urban mothers ( Mazumdar et al, 2021 ), the COVID-19 pandemic has further detached their child-rearing practices from their daily life and derailed their socialization process.…”