Parental burnout and decreased sensitivity to context for mothers: A temporal network approach grounded in the family environment

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/hs6tb
• Publication Date: 2023-07-01T05:01:35Z
• Authors: M. Annelise Blanc...; Yorgo Hoebeke; Alexandre Heeren

Parental burnout, which includes emotional exhaustion, distance, and feeling fed up with parenting, is a chronic potentially debilitating stress condition that has become highly prevalent in Western countries. Yet uncertainty remains about parents’ daily experience of burnout how their experiences interact family environment. In this study, we surveyed sample 40 parents (who felt overwhelmed exhausted by parenting) for eight weeks parental interactions children, environment, yielding 1541 total observations; main analyses focus on 36 mothers. We estimated multilevel vector autoregressive model created three distinct graphical networks to best reveal the dynamics these interactions. All models point children as key determinant parent’s burnout—particularly predicting distance up. At temporal level, symptoms were characterized strong self-prediction (autoregression). addition, severity was negatively correlated variation features. Together, results suggest mothers severe state are less sensitive context, exception children.