The temporal dynamics of parental burnout: Extending the network approach to the family system
(2024)
Files
MABlanchard_Dissertation_final.pdf
Open Access - Adobe PDF
- 5.38 MB
Details
- Authors
- Supervisors
- Heeren, Alexandre
- Abstract
- Parenting can be joyful, but also difficult. Some parents, faced with chronic unresolvable stress and insufficient resources, burn out: unlike their previous excitement and passion for parenting, they now feel emotionally exhausted, emotionally distant from their children, and fed up with parenting. Parenting entails interactions within a family context—and so to understand parental burnout requires situating it in its context of the family. This thesis proposes using a network approach to examine parental burnout and the family system: exploring how parenting experiences (reciprocally) relate to interactions with children, the co-parent, and the wider environment. Moreover, parental burnout has only been investigated as a unitary construct, but this thesis examines the distinct roles of each of its components. Using both cross-sectional and temporal network analyses, we found that emotional exhaustion likely contributes to the development of parental burnout, and emotional distance to its maintenance. I discuss these findings as grounded in specific cultural parenting norms and call for further development of network models to adequately assess family systems.
- Affiliations
Citations
Blanchard, A. (2024). The temporal dynamics of parental burnout: Extending the network approach to the family system. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/213028