Parental burnout features & their family context: A temporal network approach in mothers

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/aef27
• Publication Date: 2022-03-28T09:52:07Z
• Authors: M. Annelise Blanc...; Yorgo Hoebeke; Alexandre Heeren
• Keywords: Parents; burnout; Parenting; Family Conflict; 05 social sciences; Mothers; Burnout, Psychological; 3. Good health; stress; temporal network analysis; parenting; Humans; Female; 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences; Child; General Psychology

Many parents have days where they encounter emotional exhaustion, distance from their children, and feeling fed up with being a parent. Some experience these characteristics to severe extent—a clinical phenomenon termed parental burnout. Parental burnout arises when chronically endure stress without sufficient resources cope, which may lead detrimental consequences not only for the parent, but also partner (e.g., marital conflict) children (i.e., neglect violence). However, uncertainty remains regarding how features interact trigger one another over time (potentially becoming increasingly severe), nor daily variations of family context influence features. Therefore, in this study, we recruited 50 (with main analyses focusing on 43 mothers coparent, sensitivity full sample) general population rate core 56 days. We used multilevel vector autoregressive models generate network models. Results suggest that exhaustion contributes burnout: it self-predicts is closely associated finding difficult manage. Distance, by contrast, mainly negatively connected sharing positive moments children. Contextual variables features, illustrating relevance examining parenting within system context. If future research confirms central role development, prevention efforts can focus decreasing exhaustion.