Parenting Burnout Is Real, and Strikingly Similar to Job Burnout

[ad_1]


There are days when I can’t get enough of my son’s sweet smiles and exuberant singing and quick hugs. And then there are days when I can’t hand him off to my husband fast enough. “He needs dinner and a bath and his teeth brushed and I’m going to see a friend about a thing bye!”

I’m not the only one who needs a break: A survey of more than 2,000 Belgian parents by researchers from the Université Catholique de Louvain confirmed that moms and dads experience “parental burnout” just like working professionals can burn out on the job.

This will not come as a surprise to working moms, of course. Many of us are far too familiar with what burnout looks like at work and at home.

What’s remarkable about the study’s results, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, is just how closely parental burnout resembles work burnout.

It’s no secret that today’s professionals tend to experience work burnout at higher rates. In a recent study of 614 HR professionals, 46 percent said that employee burnout is responsible for 20 to 50 percent of annual workforce turnover each year. A big part of the blame is that companies increasingly ask their employees to do more (and more) with less (and less), according to those HR professionals. Of the biggest reasons for burnout, 41 percent pointed to unfair compensation, 32 percent cited unreasonable workloads and another 32 percent blamed too much overtime/after-work hours. 

Taken together, those factors lead to what’s often defined in academic literature as a combination of exhaustion, inefficacy (feeling less productive and competent) and depersonalization (feeling emotional withdrawal from your work and the people around you). Welcome to burnout.

But the study’s authors made a fascinating observation: Those same pressures are now present in the parenting realm, too. Increasingly, parents are doing more for their children with less help from family and friends. We shuttle our children to more activities and classes, cook healthier foods and spend more time on educating them than ever before. And for working moms, we do it all in addition to clocking in 40 hours a week or more at our jobs. Yes, it’s often rewarding, but dammit, it’s also exhausting.

As a result, around 12 percent of parents surveyed said they suffered from a “high level” of parental burnout—that is, experiencing all three criteria (exhaustion, inefficacy and detachment) more than once a week. And that’s in Belgium, where childcare is subsidized and mothers receive 15 weeks of paid maternity leave. It’s probably safe to say burnout is much higher here in the U.S., where parents are decidedly less happy than non-parents, especially compared to our European peers.



The problem with parental burnout is that it can have the same devastating health consequences as work burnout. The researchers found that it’s highly correlated with depression, addiction and other health problems. And there’s a good chance our over-scheduled lives are affecting our kids, too. We know American kids are less happy than kids in the Netherlands, where moms take a less-is-more approach.

So how do we fight parenting fatigue? Say no, Mom, and don’t feel a shred of guilt when you do. Cancel the violin lessons, leave the dishes in the sink and hand off more duties to Dad. And don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it.

[ad_2]

Source link

Reply