Article
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Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Parental Burnout in the Context of Special Needs, Adoption, and Single Parenthood
Version 1
: Received: 5 June 2023 / Approved: 5 June 2023 / Online: 5 June 2023 (12:07:39 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Roskam, I.; Mikolajczak, M. Parental Burnout in the Context of Special Needs, Adoption, and Single Parenthood. Children 2023, 10, 1131. Roskam, I.; Mikolajczak, M. Parental Burnout in the Context of Special Needs, Adoption, and Single Parenthood. Children 2023, 10, 1131.
Abstract
Although early work on parental burnout in the 1980s did not link parental burnout to specific parenting situations, the idea that parents affected by specific vulnerability factors were particularly at risk of burnout quickly emerged. Based on the etiological model of parental burnout (i.e., the balance between risks and resources), the objective of this study was to determine if there were specific vulnerability factors that significantly increase the risk of parental burnout. 2,563 parents participated in the study. We compared parents with a child with special needs (n = 25), parents who had adopted a child (n = 130), and single parents (n = 109), to strictly matched control groups of parents. Parents with a child with special needs displayed higher burnout and lower balance between risk and resources than the control group; parents with an adopted child had similar levels of both parental burnout and balance; and single parents had higher parental burnout but similar balance. Parents who combined specific several vulnerability factors were at greater risk of burnout. Single parenthood and adoption do not in themselves trigger a process leading de facto to other risk factors, but having a child with special needs does.
Keywords
exhaustion; disability; illness; disorder; adopted child; adoptive parent; single mom; single dad
Subject
Social Sciences, Psychology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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