Risk Factors for Parental Burnout among Finnish Parents: The Role of Socially Prescribed Perfectionism

Abstract

Objectives Although parental burnout can have detrimental consequences to families, the investigation of the syndrome is still in its infancy. The present study investigated what are the key family background variables that contribute to parental burnout among Finnish parents. Moreover, we investigated how self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism uniquely and interactively relate to parental burnout over and above the impacts of background variables. Methods Questionnaire-based data was collected from 1725 parents (91% mothers) and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results The results showed that when several family-and child-related background variables were taken into account, parent's age, unemployment, perceived poor financial situation of the family, and having a child with special needs, showed unique associations with burning out as a parent. Even more crucial risk factor for burning out was, however, socially prescribed perfectionism: the higher the level of socially prescribed perfectionism the parents reported, the higher the level of their parental burnout. The relationship between socially prescribed perfectionism and parental burnout was further strengthened when parents reported also a high level of self-oriented perfectionism. Finally, the relationship between gender and parental burnout was mediated via perfectionism: mothers reported more socially prescribed and self-oriented perfectionism than fathers and, consequently, were also more burned out as parents. Conclusions The results suggest that in Finland specific attention should be given to families with poor financial resources and unemployment. Moreover, high social expectations experienced by the mothers could be balanced, for example, by teaching them skills of self-acceptance and compassion. Keywords Family background variables • Parental exhaustion • Self-expectations • Social expectations • Structural equation modeling

Validity of the Finnish version of the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA)

“…Thus, the PBA scores can be thought to represent real differences in parental burnout between different samples rather than measurement artefacts related to gender or level of education. In the present study, symptoms of parental burnout were more typical for mothers than fathers, whereas no mean level differences were found in the levels of parental burnout between highly educated and lower educated parents (see also, Sorkkila & Aunola, 2020). These results were in accordance with previous findings showing that the symptoms of parental burnout are to some extent dependent on parent’s gender but not on parental education (Mikolajczak, Raes et al ., 2018; Roskam et al ., 2018; Sorkkila & Aunola, 2020).…”

“…In the present study, symptoms of parental burnout were more typical for mothers than fathers, whereas no mean level differences were found in the levels of parental burnout between highly educated and lower educated parents (see also, Sorkkila & Aunola, 2020). These results were in accordance with previous findings showing that the symptoms of parental burnout are to some extent dependent on parent’s gender but not on parental education (Mikolajczak, Raes et al ., 2018; Roskam et al ., 2018; Sorkkila & Aunola, 2020). Higher burnout levels of mothers compared to those of fathers may reflect the fact that mothers are generally more involved in children’s care and upbringing than fathers are (Mikolajczak, Raes et al ., 2018) and, thus, more prone to prolonged stress related on parenting.…”

How Good It Would Be to Turn Back Time: Adult Attachment and Perfectionism in Mothers and Their Relationships with the Processes of Parental Identity Formation

“…Studies suggest that the role of a parent is more salient for women (Kerpelman & Schvaneveldt, 1999;Williams & Kelly, 2005) and that women experience higher parenting stress than men (Simon, 1992;Hildingsson & Thomas, 2013). Recently, Roskam, Brianda, and Mikolajczak (2018) and Sorkkila and Aunola (2019) showed that mothers may also be more prone than fathers to parental burnout. In line with those results, it was decided to study the group of mothers in the present project.…”

A Network Approach to Parental Burnout

“…Still, the notion of parental burnout has gained traction (e.g., Cheng et al, 2020;Sorkkila & Aunola, 2020) and increasingly widespread recognition (e.g., Griffith, 2020).…”