So far, the conceptualization and measurement of parental burnout have been deduced from those of job burnout. As a result, it is unclear whether current measures of parental burnout constitute the best representation of the parental burnout construct/syndrome: the possibility cannot be excluded that some dimensions ought to be added, which would change the structure and definition of parental burnout. In this study, the conceptualization and measurement of parental burnout were approached using an inductive method, in which the parental burnout phenomenon was (re)constructed based solely on the testimonies of burned-out parents. Items extracted from their testimonies were presented to a sample of French-speaking and English-speaking parents (N = 901) and submitted to factor analyses. An identifiable parental burnout syndrome including four dimensions was found (exhaustion in one's parental role, contrast with previous parental self, feelings of being fed up with one's parental role and emotional distancing from one's children). The resulting instrument, the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA) presents good validity. Factorial invariance across gender and languages was also found. Finally, the results of this study replicate previous findings that psychological traits of the parents, parenting factors, and family functioning account for more variance in parental burnout than sociodemographic factors.

Can parents burn out? The aim of this research was to examine the construct validity of the concept of parental burnout and to provide researchers which an instrument to measure it. We conducted two successive questionnaire-based online studies, the first with a community-sample of 379 parents using principal component analyses and the second with a community- sample of 1,723 parents using both principal component analyses and confirmatory factor analyses. We investigated whether the tridimensional structure of the burnout syndrome (i.e., exhaustion, inefficacy, and depersonalization) held in the parental context. We then examined the specificity of parental burnout vis-à-vis professional burnout assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory, parental stress assessed with the Parental Stress Questionnaire and depression assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory. The results support the validity of a tri-dimensional burnout syndrome including exhaustion, inefficacy and emotional distancing with, respectively, 53.96 and 55.76% variance explained in study 1 and study 2, and reliability ranging from 0.89 to 0.94. The final version of the Parental Burnout Inventory (PBI) consists of 22 items and displays strong psychometric properties (CFI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.06). Low to moderate correlations between parental burnout and professional burnout, parental stress and depression suggests that parental burnout is not just burnout, stress or depression. The prevalence of parental burnout confirms that some parents are so exhausted that the term “burnout” is appropriate. The proportion of burnout parents lies somewhere between 2 and 12%. The results are discussed in light of their implications at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels.

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Parenting can be wonderful. However, it also can be stressful, and when parents lack the resources needed to handle stressors related to parenting, they may develop parental burnout. This condition is characterized by an overwhelming exhaustion related to one’s parental role, an emotional distancing from one’s children, and a sense of parental ineffectiveness. Researchers have begun to document the antecedents of parental burnout, but little is known about its consequences. Here we investigated the impact of parental burnout on escape ideation, parental neglect, and parental violence through two cross-lagged longitudinal studies ( N = 918, N = 822) that involved the completion of online surveys three times over a year. Results indicated that parental burnout strongly increases escape ideation as well as neglectful and violent behaviors toward one’s children (aggregated Cohen’s d = 1.31, 1.25, and 1.25, respectively). These findings show that parental burnout is a serious condition that urgently requires more attention.

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Parental burnout is a specific syndrome resulting from enduring exposure to chronic parenting stress. But why do some parents burn out while others, facing the same stressors, do not? The main aim of this paper was to propose a theory of parental burnout capable of predicting who is at risk of burnout, explaining why a particular parent burned out and why at that specific point in time, and providing directions for intervention. The secondary goal was to operationalize this theory in a tool that would be easy to use for both researchers and clinicians. The results of this two-wave longitudinal study conducted on 923 parents suggest that the Balance between Risks and Resources (BR2) theory proposed here is a relevant framework to predict and explain parental burnout. More specifically, the results show that (1) the BR2 instrument reliably measures parents' balance between risks (parental stress-enhancing factors) and resources (parental stress-alleviating factors), (2) there is a strong linear relationship between BR2 score and parental burnout, (3) parental burnout results from a chronic imbalance of risks over resources, (4) BR2 predicts parental burnout better than job burnout and (5) among the risk and resource factors measured in BR2, risks and resources non-specific to parenting (e.g., low stress-management abilities, perfectionism) equally predict parental and job burnout, while risks and resources specific to parenting (e.g., childrearing practices, coparenting) uniquely predict parental burnout.

High levels of stress in the parenting domain can lead to parental burnout, a condition that has severe consequences for both parents and children. It is not yet clear, however, whether parental burnout varies by culture, and if so, why it might do so. In this study, we examined the prevalence of parental burnout in 42 countries (17,409 parents; 71% mothers; M age = 39.20) and showed that the prevalence of parental burnout varies dramatically across countries. Analyses of cultural values revealed that individualistic cultures, in particular, displayed a noticeably higher prevalence and mean level of parental burnout. Indeed, individualism plays a larger role in parental burnout than either economic inequalities across countries, or any other individual and family characteristic examined so far, including the number and age of children and the number of hours spent with them. These results suggest that cultural values in Western countries may put parents under heightened levels of stress.

Introduction: The DSM-5 Alternative Model of Personality Disorders (AMPD) and the ICD-11 classification of personality disorders (PD) are largely commensurate and, when combined, they delineate 6 trait domains: negative affectivity, detachment, antagonism/dissociality, disinhibition, anankastia, and psychoticism. Objective: The present study evaluated the international validity of a brief 36-item patientreport measure that portrays all 6 domains simultaneously including 18 primary subfacets. Methods: We developed and employed a modified version of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5-Brief Form Plus (PID5BF+). A total of 16,327 individuals were included, 2,347 of whom were patients. The expected 6-factor structure of facets was initially investigated in samples from Denmark (n = 584), Germany (n = 1,271), and the USA (n = 605) and subsequently replicated in both patient-and community samples from Italy,