Parental burnout and adolescents’ academic burnout: Roles of parental harsh discipline, psychological distress, and gender

Abstract

Parental burnout is an emerging hot issue in discussions about children’s mental health and development. However, little is known about the underlying psychological mechanisms of parental burnout on children’s academic burnout. To fill in this gap, we aim to examine the relationship between parental burnout and adolescents’ academic burnout, as well as the mediating effects of harsh discipline, adolescents’ psychological distress, and the moderating effect of gender. A sample of 871 junior high school students (477 boys and 394 girls) and their primary caregivers from Eastern China participated in this study. The results showed a direct relationship between parental burnout and academic burnout as well as an indirect relationship through the mediating role of psychological distress and the chain-mediating roles of parental harsh discipline and psychological distress. Furthermore, we discovered that fathers’ parental burnout had a stronger effect on children’s psychological distress than mothers. These findings contribute to our understanding of how parental burnout relates to children’s academic burnout and underline the significance of fathers’ parental burnout.

A systematic review of parental burnout and related factors among parents

“…Children ranged in age from 0 to 18, with the majority being typical between 0 and 6 years old. Two researchs study on parenting burnout in infants [ 30 , 34 ], five studies [ 16 , 18 , 29 , 33 , 51 ] on parenting burnout in parents of exceptional children, one study [ 48 ] on children with diabetes and one study on kids who needed ongoing pediatric outpatient care [ 32 ]. Seventeen research included both mothers and fathers, and nine studies [ 28 , 30 , 31 , 34 , 40 – 42 , 47 , 52 ] were conducted on a sample of just mothers from the general community.…”

“…Indeed, in addition to affecting the parents themselves, parental burnout has serious repercussions on children by leading parents to be neglectful or even violent towards their offspring [13,14]. Parental burnout is also considered to be a risk factor for academic burnout and internal/external problems in children [15][16][17], which increases adolescents' levels of anxiety and loneliness, aggressive behavior, and depression, reducing adolescents' life satisfaction and mental health [18]. In the case of families, parenting burnout increases the frequency and intensity of spousal conflict [6], strains family relations and reduces the quality of life and life satisfaction of family members.…”

The Effect of Paternal Co-Parenting on Preschool Children’s Problem Behaviors: The Chain-Mediating Role of Maternal Parenting Burnout and Psychological Aggression

“…However, research has suggested that there is a correlation between maternal parenting burnout and psychological aggression. [37][38][39] From a biological perspective, stress can trigger and fuel anger, 40 while emotional and physical burnout may restrict executive resources that are available to curb negative behavior. 41 Mothers who are overworked or chronically exposed to parenting stress will fall into a state of parenting burnout, which can undermine their capacity to regulate negative parenting behaviors.…”

Direct and indirect effects of father-child attachment on academic burnout in college students

“…Individual internal factors include factors such as professional commitment (Lian et al, 2006), coping styles (Shi et al, 2023), academic anxiety (Gao, 2023), loneliness (Gu et al, 2023), self-esteem (Yu et al, 2023), achievement motivation (Atik and Çelik, 2021), personality (Lee et al, 2017;Kong et al, 2021), positive psychological capital (Wang et al, 2021), psychological resilience (Gong et al, 2023), self-efficacy (Chen et al, 2023), and core self-evaluation (Dortaj, 2021). External environmental factors include stress (Watson et al, 2008;Gong et al, 2023;Shi et al, 2023), social support (Ye et al, 2021;Fu, 2023), parental education anxiety (Kai et al, 2022), parental supervision (Affuso et al, 2017), and parent-child attachment (Zhang et al, 2019).…”