Parental Burn-out : Influence of demographic factors and Infant temperament
Résumé
Parenthood can prove to be a difficult and stressful experience, as mothers and fathers are exposed to any number of chronic stressors inherent to their role as parents (Latson, 1995). These feelings of stress, combined with the accumulation of seemingly challenging situations, can lead to a state of so-called parental burnout. Many factors explain the interindividual differences in parental burnout as defined by Roskam, Raes and Mikolajczak (2017). This study, which included 272 parents, examines the relationship between parental burnout assess by PBI (Roskam et al., 2017), demographic factors (gender of parents and children, age of parents and children and number of children present in the family home) and infant temperament (IBQ & ECBQ), assessed by the parent.
With regard to demographic factors, our results show that the younger the parents surveyed, the more they report a high sense of personal accomplishment, but they tend to feel more exhausted. Similar results are observed when we look at the age of children. In addition, the number of children at home slightly increases the emotional distance between the parent and their children.
This first result of our study is consistent with previous studies (e.g., Mikolajczak, Raes, Avalosse, & Roskam, 2017) who show that parent of children below 5 years old are more at risk to develop parental burn out than the other. This result shows how import is it to focus study on parent of young children.
Another result found by Le Vigouroux, Scola, Raes, Mikolajczak, & Roskam (2017) showed the impact of individual differences in parental burnout. Three personality traits are linked with parental burn out: a high level of neuroticism, a low level of conscientiousness, and a low level of agreeableness were all found to be risk factors for parental burnout.
Theses two results conduct us to question in a second step of our study the effect of the perception of the infant temperament assess by IBQ (3 to 18-month-old) and ECBQ (18 to 36 months old) on parental burnout. If individual differences in parental personality traits could be protective factors or risk factors to develop parental burnout we could hypothesis that the perception of the infant temperament too. Analyses test the individual variability effect on the infant temperament on parental burn out in our population of 272 parents. We hypothesis that perceiving infants with high level of arousal and more negative affect are at risk to develop parental burnout. This study is the first one to our knowledge to link this two field of research.