Gender Differences in the Nature, Antecedents and Consequences of Parental Burnout

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Gender Differences in the Nature, Antecedents and Consequences of Parental Burnout Isabelle Roskam 1

&

Moïra Mikolajczak 1

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract Parenthood remains one of the most gender-typed social roles in adulthood. Given gender inequality in parenting, it has been very surprising to find that parental burnout affects both mothers and fathers in equal proportion. The aim of the present study was to properly test gender effects in the nature, average level, antecedents, and consequences of parental burnout. Data were collected from a strictly matched sample of about 900 French- and English-speaking mothers and fathers. We found measurement invariance across genders and a higher average level of parental burnout among mothers than fathers. We also found the same antecedent mechanism at work in both mothers and fathers (i.e., an imbalance of risks over resources in the specific context of parenting), but fathers were seen to be more vulnerable to such imbalance in this specific area. Burnout ultimately was seen to have more detrimental consequences for fathers than for mothers. In particular, escape and suicidal ideations as well as neglectful behaviors toward children were more common in burned-out fathers than in mothers. Our findings are discussed together with considerations of the gender-role socialization process, social roles as shared norms, and the salience of parental identity in women and men. Keywords Exhaustion . Gender roles . Child maltreatment . Violence . Child neglect . Suicide

Recent decades have seen important changes in favor of gender equality, which have resulted in increasing involvement of fathers in childcare and education. Nonetheless, parenthood remains the most gender-typed social role in adulthood (Koivunen et al. 2009; Nentwich 2008; Stewart and McDermott 2004). Interactions with children remain an integral part of women’s identity, and mothers are still the primary parent in charge of children’s lives (Renk et al. 2003). Even in couples describing their relationship as egalitarian, men are considered as “active caring fathers” whereas women are considered as “active working mothers” (Nentwich 2008). In other words, for the father, it is the role of breadwinner that is taken for granted (but he can choose to share responsibility for Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-020-01121-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Isabelle Roskam [email protected] 1

Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, 10, Place du Cardinal Mercier, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

the children with the mother), whereas for the mother, it is responsibility for the children that is taken for granted (but she can choose to work and, in this case, she agrees to take on the double task). From pregnancy to the end of breastfeeding, sex-typed roles in parenting are mainly due to biological r